Trees and raindrops
music
Wake Me When It’s Over | #WeekendCoffeeShare
Our host Allison’s Weekend Coffee Share post can be found HERE, along with the Link button that leads to URLs to other Weekend Coffee Share participants’ posts.
Welcome to Weekend Coffee Share! There is coffee…and Toddy coffee. There is black English Breakfast tea. There is very dark chocolate in the refrigerator. On the table, there are mandarin oranges and apples. Please help yourself.
Warmer weather scoots in and out again, the spring melt is going satisfyingly slow, and I am tired. I forget from one year to the next that the warmer weather saps my energy and ambition. I would rather be sleeping than anything else. Wake me again in October, when the sunlight has started to shorten its hours.
If we were getting together, this weekend, I would show you the disparity of the seasonal changes, this past week.
This week, Al took the snowblower to the perimeter of the back yard, because the Scampers took to walking over the side fence into the neighbor’s back yard, where they encountered the neighbor’s hypersensitive, very loud spaniel.
When I got the Scampers back into our yard and inside the house, I went next door to discover that Cutty’s owner had closed him in a bedroom where Cutty was still howling to be let out so that he could continue the fight. What fun!
I would also confide that we attended another family funeral. This time, a former client of mine whose daughter is married to one of my husband’s nephews. The fragrances (and wax from burning candles) were pretty bad, but we managed to get through half an hour of the visitation time and listen to instrumental music presented by some of his grandchildren, prior to the formal service. Sweetness. So sorry for them that they’ve lost one of their grandparents at such an early age.
This past week, I have sought out CDs online to replace some of my favorite LPs that have long since been lost. Music that I enjoyed in high school and college, that I find myself missing. I have not really listened to music during these past few decades, as well as no longer reading newspapers. listening to radio (other than 2-meter net), or watching television. Which reminds me: my husband read somewhere that some HF bands might be opened to hams with Tech licenses, which would mean that I could use our HF radios. I hope that the changes will come to pass. I bought an album containing two of Dmitri Shostakovich’s cantatas and his oratorio Song of the Forests. Also, Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos and Paganini variations and another album that included “Isle of the Dead” and his first symphony. I used to play a lot of piano pieces by Rachmaninoff. That sheet music has long since aged to the point of disintegration. If I become well enough to do so, I would like to get the piano repaired and start at least to get back into playing Bach and ragtime. Or get an electronic keyboard, if we could find a company that picks up and disposes of older pianos.
I would also mention that I have started reading a series of books, this past week. Years ago, I bought and read a related novella in the series, not realizing that it was not a stand-alone. I have now read the two books following that novella in the timeline and also the first book in the series. Anna Lee Huber is the author, and the series is A Lady Darby Mystery. A nice break from my usual fare, which as been mostly rereads of old favorites.
Thank you for stopping by! Hate to go, but I need to get a “real meal” in me.
Best wishes,
Lizl
P.S. National Puppy Day pictures at TheArtOfDisorder and World Poetry Day poem at QuiltedPoetry (both WordPress blogs).
Day Three: Commit to a writing practice / Songs
Today’s prompt: Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you?
I’m not sure at what point I realized that I actively hate music. I will do almost anything to avoid listening to it. If I’ve heard the music before, it’s irritating to hear it again. Every time it deviates from the original version that I listened to, it feels as though I’ve tripped over a branch in my path and I’m about to fall. If the piece is new to me, it’s too distracting to do anything but listen, and so I quickly move away or muffle the sounds.
I do, however, enjoy occasionally making up a melody and fitting a poem to it. I like to sing, to feel the air moving in and out, the tension in my muscles, the support of my diaphragm, the vibration of my vocal cords, my throat, the “almost echo” of the sound in my sinus cavities.
I enjoyed the feeling of the cornet’s mouthpiece as I played scales, lowest to highest range and back again. And the French horn as I worked to find the precise feeling of fullness for each note.
I love the twisting of my wrists and the way my fingers tap or, in turn, caress piano keys as I play “Maple Leaf Rag”. My racing fingers move up and down the keyboard, playing three- or four-octave arpeggios, major and minor keys, faster and faster, until my fingers trip over one another and I collapse in laughter. There is that breathless excitement and a need to rest just a little bit . . . before I do it all over again.
Songs that mean something to me? No! None!
But I revel in the patterns of my body as it creates new dances.
Walls: Up against ’em
Long ago and far away, I had an album, Lorin Hollander At The Fillmore East. My favorite piece on the album (a live recording), was Up Against the Wall. I played piano a lot, back in those years, and this toccata for piano, written by Hollander, was spellbinding.
I think the LP is still downstairs in our collection, waiting to be digitized. The turntable hasn’t been set up, yet, and connected to a computer.
With a nod to Pear and Bulb and my thanks for the picture!
The Moments Between 