Filed under: General
I’ve decided that if I ever organize a business, I’m going to name it Non Sequiturs Unlimited, Ltd.
Filed under: Analyze This
In my dream last night, KathyHowe came to visit me for the weekend. Even though I knew that she was coming, I didn’t occur to me to buy any food. As she was settling in, I apologized for the bare cupboards, and promised to go to the store later in the evening. She told me not to worry about it, that she was sure there was enough food in the house to scrape together a quick meal. While I was looking through the cookbook for an iced tea recipe, she whipped up an entire baked ham with mashed potatoes meal for us.
Filed under: The VIM
Me: I need to bake a cake for work on Monday. Can I bring all the stuff to your house and we’ll do it after the game, or should I just do it at home on Sunday morning?
Him: Bring all the stuff here. You’ll probably need help lifting it out of the oven.
Filed under: General
I took many years of piano lessons. I never really applied myself, so I don’t play particularly well. It also doesn’t help that I really haven’t played much at all since high school (uhhhh, twenty years ago), since it’s not particularly convenient to move a piano from dorm room to apartment to apartment to apartment. I own a little cheap keyboard now, and every once in a while I’ll pull it out, smooth out the sheet music or prop up the hymnal on the stand (I love four-part hymns…it’s one of those childhood nostalgia things for me).
The VIM, who never took music lessons and can’t read music, but still manages to be a great guitar player, has a lot of music equipment that he messes around with, and has decided to record some of his original songs. He wants me to accompany him on the piano.
What a freakin’ fiasco. Yes, I can play piano, but I need to play from the music. I don’t understand this free-form make it up as you go crap. Give Me Notes, people! You can’t say “Play D here” and expect me to fill up the next 4 bars with chords and notes compatible with D.” If you say “Play D here,” I will play D (or maybe the D chord if I’m feeling adventurous), then wait for the next instruction. There is no musical freeform creativity in me. It’s been beaten out by 10 years of strict adherence to sheet music.
So the VIM is working with me very slowly and patiently. There are a lot of “That’s it…you’ve got it!”’s going on. A lot of support as I wrap my head around
Breaking
Every
Rule
I
Learned.
It’s not that I don’t have the skills to make music up as I go along. It’s that I was told over and over again that I wasn’t allowed to do that. Now that I finally understand that it’s up to me, I have a new purpose. To keep working at it. Keep learning.
This morning, as I was thinking about how fun it is to sit there and hit chords until I get the one that sounds juuuuuust right, I realized that it’s not just musical creativity that’s up to me.
It’s ALL up to me, isn’t it?
What rules and routines can I challenge today?
Filed under: Photos
I really like the picture on the new masthead. The way it’s cropped, though, gives it sort of a scary feel, and that’s not really the feeling I was going for.
Here’s the whole picture:
The buddha is a little fella – about two feet tall. In the summer he stands in all his glory, surrounded by lush hostas. He’s more like Buddha in the Jungle. Autumn takes the color from the hostas, and the ivy takes advantage of the hosta’s waning stronghold. Buddha, however keeps on standing, keeps on saluting the sun. The surroundings fade and change, but the buddha just keeps on keeping on.
