Even in Kyoto

At least, that's pretty much how I found myself buying someone's concertina album on Bandcamp on Friday.

I have had a series of adventures this weekend. Saturday wound up involving a bunch of biking around. First to rowing practice, where there were flotillas of fishermen out in search of the migrating striped bass. Then home again, then to the bank and hardware store, where I bought 100 pounds of sand (2 bags). The sand went right back to the boathouse and into a set of purpose-made tent weight bags for my EZ-Up tent, which will get deployed at a festival next weekend to help recruit new rowers.

When I got back home from those errands, I realized I might have *just* enough time to get groceries ahead of another commitment, so off I went again.

But then the evening, at least, was quieter.

There were fern fiddleheads for sale at the co-op, so I bought some to try out. I followed internet directions to boil them for 10 minutes, and then fried them up in a bit of butter, seasoned them with some salt, pepper, and lemon juice, and ate them.

...I think maybe my preparation method wasn't the best for them. They were fine, but not anything amazing. Maybe I should have roasted them after boiling? I'm not sure. I am glad to have at least tried them to see what they're like.

Today, I went on a hike! That's deserving of its own post, once I can figure out why my computer and phone currently aren't talking to each other (may just require a computer reboot).

Here's something positive and powerful to read about today: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/theresatamkins/music-heals-kexp-mental-health

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, and I'm pretty sure I'll say it again, but KEXP was HUGE for me most especially in the early stay-at-home days of the pandemic. Humans are inherently social creatures, so even when physical presence isn't possible, it's big to have other ways to connect with each other.

When listening to the radio, S often gets annoyed by DJ chatter. I can't always blame him - sometimes it bugs me as well. But at the same time, for me, there are exceptions. Humans tend to be pretty good at evaluating authenticity. It's fairly easy to tell the difference between someone who is showing up and speaking into a microphone for the sake of a paycheck, compared to someone who brings their entire, vulnerable self to the microphone and opens their mouth to share and connect with others. So I very much agree with Richards about some of the things he's saying about radio, and why what KEXP does is so powerful.

1. Why did it take until just this week for me to finally own Kraftwerk albums? Radio-Activity is not my favorite, though.

2. This NYT article about cardboard is fascinating but also a little horrifying to me. I am thinking about it now every time I get on the bikeErg on the front porch to throw down some meters for the Holiday Challenge. The erg and bikeErg are both set up such that they are staring at the piles of boxes and packing material. I do appreciate the point that biodegradable packaging is preferable over plastic packaging. The stuff on the porch is a mixture of the two types. I'm just trying to imagine other ways of moving goods about, but drawing blanks. People do employ reusable containers sometimes for these purposes, but it really does seem as though it will be impossible to top the cost and convenience of cardboard. What an amazing invention.

One of my cousins is a singer studying Medieval music. In the midst of the Pandemic she moved to Switzerland, and just recently posted links to videos of a couple of recent singing performances. It seemed to me like a number of people here might enjoy listening to them (though I can't say I completely agree with the lyrics!).

Since I finished reading that sailing book Tuesday evening, and since rowing practice last night got canceled due to wind and lightning, I didn't have much of an agenda last night and found myself returning to watching internet videos of classical marimba performances.

I don't know what it is about marimbas that continues to tickle my musical funny bone, but I love them. It has some connection to growing up playing the piano, another percussive instrument, but the kind of sound that comes out of a marimba is different. I can't imagine ever learning how to play one.

A friend of mine gave me this album a number of years ago: https://youtu.be/Cn7NCrMIbTA

Yesterday, while I sewed, I also tried to work my way through my collection of CDs, to figure out which things I haven't digitized that I might want during the upcoming unknown period when most of my stuff will be in storage, somewhere, again.

This album is very different from the rest of the music I own. But I like it, a lot. It's so rich.

The friend who gave it to me, GP, was a sad and complicated person who was brilliant and schizophrenic and couldn't handle dealing with women. Somehow I was able to be an exception for a long time*, until he reached a stage where he couldn't handle dealing with my Ph.D. advisor or academic institutions anymore and decided to make his own way in the world (with well-deserved financial freedom and security from an independent unknown sponsor). I bumped into him once sometime after all that, at the Phoenicia Cafe in Tempe, which had become his hangout for writing, and we basically parted ways amicably.

I couldn't keep up with reading his polygraphia, which he wanted+didn't want others to read (obsessive pageview checking of his website, extremely rare hints that it existed - ah! It still exists!). He was very much into various forms of Eastern philosophy (I don't personally know much about the subject). I believe he's basically reinterpreting and commenting on Supreme Court decisions, but with an alternate, fictional court composition. He compulsively collected many kinds of beautiful things, like fancy fountain pens and glass paperweights and scrolls.

I think he was one of those people who can hold up a mirror and show us ourselves (humanity, society) in new ways because he had stepped outside in various ways.

I like a quotation he taught me: "Above confluent hatred, birds call identically."


*Somehow he did not perceive me as a woman, I guess? I would say the age difference was too great, except that he really couldn't handle being around another grad student from my cohort, so I have to suppose I wasn't too overtly feminine. I was interested in friendship, anyway.

My new house has a piano.

I am so, so, so, so, so rusty.

However!

Playing the piano does something for my soul that is similar to rowing, somehow.

Several high-octave keys stick a bit, and it's not especially in tune. It is still infinitely easier to play than my parents' piano in its current state. About ten years ago, my parents had Deano the Clown replace the felt under the keys, but unfortunately that made it apparent that the springs that return the hammers to their starting position are also worn out and tired. As a result, it's impossible to press the same key with any sort of rapidity, which makes the piano INCREDIBLY frustrating to play. It was already a somewhat challenging piano because the keys are pretty slippery and strangely narrow, but that never bothered me too much while learning on it while growing up. The harp's also cracked, but it was my grandma's piano so there are lots of good reasons to keep it in the family.

I need to do more sight-reading practice. Eventually people are going to notice that I play the same songs over and over again. Not that I really care. They are also going to notice that when they say, "Play Song X!" I am not going to be able to whip the tune out and play away.

Whatever.

Piano!!

Continuing to work my way through my CD collection has led to some wonderful surprises, especially in the "mix-tape" department. There's one from S that I haven't listened to often enough, and one from my friend CD. Then there's one from quite a while back when a group of LJ folks got together and had a "Music and Drinks" CD club, where one person per month would send out a mix CD to the rest of the participants. I'm pretty sure my contribution was less than stellar and quite different from the musical tastes of the other participants, but I suppose that's an inherent risk of the concept. However, the "Mango Margarita Mix" CD was good and classy. And last night I listened to one of two mix CDs a friend made for a cocktail party from back in the Garage days.

I really don't need to go out and get more music, especially when I can just shop among the things I already own.

Work is going to be crazy over the next three weeks. That's going to make the April 18th brevet even more crazy and stressful.

Back at it.

Last Sunday, I went on a return trip to RadioShack, to track down the correct size of adapter for a Bose portable CD player I received many years ago. The laser on the CD player on the "ghettoblaster" boombox has gone out of focus, so the only other method I had for playing CDs was to hook up the external CD drive to my computer and then run an audio cable from the computer to the boombox, thus tethering the computer in place. I am so glad to have a functional CD player system again, plus my CD collection, out of the storage pod.

Theoretically, I could also just save all of my music to my hard drive, but stuff gets lost that way because I just don't think in filenames, and there's a bunch of junk mixed in with the music files I actually want to listen to. Encountering the music physically as I flip through the stacks of CDs brings up a separate set of memories. Albums really are a correct unit for music.

I would say that well over half of this CD collection consists of stuff I only listen to by myself. In groups or even just with S, I let other people dominate the music selection. Some of it is stuff that dates back to high school - the old Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco albums, for instance, but also the soundtrack to Pi and American Beauty, and a lot of the classical piano music (I didn't keep the Alanis Morisette album, however, heh). I haven't listened to Tori Amos or Ani DiFranco in years (over a decade?), but lately I keep thinking of the very first DiFranco album, especially the sentiments about being a stranger in a new city. But a portion of my collection is newer as well - it was wonderful to be introduced to Laura Veirs and Neko Case by friends during graduate school. Finding the right sort of marimba music, too, has taken a considerable amount of effort (so happy to have discovered Casey Cangelosi on the InterTube!), and I only recently bought two George Winston albums because it's good music when trying to write because of its earnestness (and lack of words).

I also come back repeatedly to certain ambient sounds, like the Sounds and Songs of the Humpback Whales, and Paul Horn's original Inside the Taj Mahal, as they bring a sense of peace. Those, plus that one album of Beethoven Piano Sonatas (played by Ekaterina Murina), are on my Desert Island list.

When I have to do a lot of emotional processing, I really, really miss having a piano to play.

For some reason, today I have gotten a short piano piece from the film Amélie stuck in my head. It took me a while to track down that film as the source of the pleasant earworm (I sidetracked myself into listening to a couple of albums by piano-thumper George Winston in the meantime - his stuff's pretty good, but seriously, he thumps the keys just a bit too much*). I think Amélie used to get played frequently in the long-gone 3 Roots coffeeshop, since I don't seem to already own a copy of the soundtrack.

That, in turn, reminded me of a program that I still deeply miss - Ford Thaxton's program on Classic King FM, Soundtrack Cinema. Here's a small bit I managed to dig up about him. I used to fall asleep listening to his program on Saturday nights - imaginative classical movie soundtracks interspersed with interesting stories about the films and composers who wrote the music. That show is where I first became obsessed with Thomas Newman (I have been listening to the American Beauty soundtrack for DECADES while at work on homework and academic writing). Thaxton has something of a thick, mouth-breather voice, but somehow it was PERFECT for the show - gave me the sense of listening to a fellow, unabashed sci-fi nerd. Rock on, dude, wherever you are.

Does anything like this even exist anymore? Classic KING FM ruined me for other classical music stations. I quickly learned that WCRB in Boston played the same garbageold stuf over and over again, and so did KBAQ in the Phoenix area. No New Music Ensemble in the evenings, just the same symphonies with scraping violins written by guys who died centuries ago.


*but who am I to criticize, really, since I am sure my keyboard technique has gone completely to shit and probably wasn't all that good to begin with anyway. Props to him for writing the stuff he writes, and doing his thing.