Metamorphosism

Alpha just left for Carinthia with her father, to pick up her mother who was getting massages because she got a fresh knee, is my understanding. Beta is in Vienna preparing for a visit to Indonesia. Gamma just sent us an SMS from London, BIN LEBEND ANGEKOMMEN (”I arrived alive”).

There have been ads for a show on television recently, something something SOLITARY CONFINEMENT something, with images of people freaking out because they can’t take 9 days alone. What could be easier? I thought.

Except. Ignoring people who are here is easier to take, it turns out, than dealing with their absence.

Despite the list of activities my wife gave me before she left.

And the list I have myself. Water garden. Tie up tomatoes. Filter pool. Yell at cats and chase them around. Chat with tortoise. Play cello, which has brand new Larsen strings and sounds amazng now.

And other stuff. Walks and stuff. Sleep. Icecream straight out of the container.

My uncle Phil died on Saturday. He was 86. I don’t want to write a long, emotional thing here, but I don’t know.

My brother sent me this picture. I was kind of numb until I saw this, then I cried so hard the cat got worried.

Listen, I was trying to remember my first memory of Phil, and it turns out to be my first memory at all. I was maybe two. He was carrying me on his back, down the path between his filbert orchard and his garden. A row of blackberries was on the left, the filbert trees on the right. Do you know the smell of filbert trees?

Beyond the row of berries was his large vegetable garden. The path led from his barn and chicken house between his junk pile and his wood pile, past his garage and tool shed, to his house. On the right are the fields where he had cows and my dad would later have horses sometimes.

Phil is carrying me, and I say, “Phil, you’re a pill.”

The rhyme interested me. And kidding with Phil.

There are a lot of things here. They are central to me, and they all come from my uncle. Everything I am, or very very much of it, is thanks to uncle Phil.

And this one image, this one memory says so much about him.

He was always carrying someone in one way or another. He lived to help other people. He was never rich and never had money, but he always had a twenty for you when you were broke, there was always cash in his birthday cards, or a check. He never had money but he made the world an abundant place and then he shared that abundance with everyone.

He helped my folks a lot. He helped all the relatives, he helped old people, he baby sat nieces and nephews. When I was in college I worked with him recycling metals and paper, and washing windows, and he shared the proceeds with me way more generously than he ought to have.

He financed my first trip to Europe by selling government bonds. I worked after school jobs and summer jobs to pay him back. He financed my second trip to Europe. I paid him back for that, too. Never once did he mention it or ask me to repay him.

And he was this way with everyone.

Always a twenty. Always a box of tomatoes from his garden. Always some eggs from the chicken house.

He took us camping, and his pack was always the heaviest, despite the rocks he hid in your pack as a practical joke.

Dinners were fun times. If you looked away, he stole your food.

I won’t go on and on here,  although I could.

He took pictures. It was like having Diane Arbus in the family. He took many thousands of pictures since the 1940s. Always the camera. Always posing us. Or taking candid shots. We were often, Oh, Phil, not another picture. But, now we have dozens and dozens of albums, dating back to the 1940s. It’s a precious thing.

Little did we know.

And funny thing, he liked word play, especially spoonerisms, and I like words too. I have a garden. I like practical jokes. And it’s not only me. My brother has a garden and chickens. If you go to his house, he will give you vegetables. He takes care of old people. And my sister is that way too. And my cousins. Phil was central to all of us. We all want to go to Hawaii again. He got us started with that. We all like to travel. If you look away, we will all steal your food.

So, Phil. Abundant and funny, practical jokes and generous. I am not monkey man strong, though. Things have their limits. He was not a big guy, average size about, but he would come home from the mountains with a truckload of waste wood he had salvaged from some logging operation, to burn, and dude - there were logs in there that filled the bed of his truck. How did you get those in there, we would ask him. I just put them in, he would say.

And he had an arm. He liked ball sports. He was athletic. I’m none of these things. I remember him one time, he was up on a ladder picking pears. I was bugging him about something. Then I ran away. I got clear across the field. I thought I was home free. How far away was I? It felt like miles. I was running and laughing when a rotten pear hit me right in the lower back so hard that half the pear went up my shirt, clear to my shoulder blades, and the other half filled the crack of my ass. It was the most perfect rotten pear shot known to science.

I started crying, I was so shocked. It shouldn’t have been possible! No one can throw a rotten pear that far!

I don’t know how old I was. Forty? Or nine, maybe? Something like that.

So, Phil. I could go on and on. We were driving down the street once, and a guy on the sidewalk spazzed out and fell down. Phil stopped the car, ran over and helped him. Would you have? At the time, I would have just ignored it. But he got the guy into the shade, found out what was wrong with him, got help.

I think the guy was drunk. I think it turned out he was drunk, but I also think I’m making that up, or made it up then. He may have had a seizure, it was a hot day. I don’t know. It was just a weird, scary guy, and Phil didn’t even think, he ran over and helped him.

I could go on and on.

On and on.

Girl: “Dad are you just lying there on the sofa reading music?”

Man: “Mm-hm.”

Girl: [Shakes head]

The kind person who helped me shop for cello music had to sing the music to me to give me an impression of what it sounded like, because I had been convinced it was impossible for me to, you know, just look at it and know what it sounded like. But then, as she sang it, I tried to sing along (very quietly) and it actually worked, somewhat.

And I remembered how Beta would 1.)sit down and read a new piece of music and then 2.) play it on the harp, more or less just like that. I had been impressed by how she could read a piece of music the way you might read a story.

So there I was with a bunch of new music, so I decided to try that myself. I curled up on the sofa with Gabrielli’s Ricercari. I read the accompanying foreword and I hummed along with the music the way a child sounds out the words as he or she learns to read. It was a start. I guess a phobia of one kind or another had prevented me from trying that before. Or a failure to imagine that it might be possible.

Gabrielli’s Ricercari (I haven’t tried to play them yet) are interesting because they are among the first tunes composed for solo cello. According to the second article linked above, these compositions were also influenced by the recent (at that time - late 1600s) invention of wire-wrapped strings which made them more responsive and enabled cellists to play faster, more or less.

I can’t wait to try it. But right now I’m working on “Impromptu” by Alexander Arutunian. It has sort of this Armenian folky feel to it which is kind of neat. So far so good.

Have you heard of the Black Hole endpin stop? Have you? Have you heard of it? Because if you haven’t, let me be the one to tell you it’s awesome. You know those portable holes some cartoon character used to carry around and use to escape with?

Maybe it was Wile E. Coyote, maybe it was someone else. I can’t remember right now. I’m getting conflicting signals when I try. [Edit: Looney Tunes, apparently. Thanks, Anne. ] But remember what a cool idea that seemed like?

Anyway, after 10 years of battling with a big T made of wood scraps that I wedged beneath my chair when I practiced, to stick the end of my endpin into, I discovered the Black Hole, a black rubber disk about 4 inches in diameter, with a hole in the center to hold the end of your endpin. It is made of a rubber that is non-skid on wooden or tile floors. It is said to be washable if it gets too dusty to grip the floor anymore.

It fits in your pocket. No more giant wooden T. I love it, and not only because of its name. But partly because of its name.

Second thing I learned about playing cello:

Don’t forget to breathe.

I am quite good at holding my breath. I can go two minutes. I can swim two laps underwater, if the pool is not too big. I apparently can play an entire tune without taking a breath, too, without keeling over off my chair. But that is not enough. Holding your breath affects your playing.

Who knew?

Ruth, you there?

Anyway, breathing. As if fingering and bowing at the same time wasn’t hard enough already.

Also: I’m getting really tired of Bach? Not to diss Bach, I love his music. It is just taking me forever to learn this tune I’m working on. How do you find a tune to work on that is both enjoyable and at the proper difficulty level? That is my problem, ignorant of music as I am. I hear something exquisite, want to learn it and then am all Holy Toledo! when I get a look at the notes, usually.

So I’m trying to compose something. A little something. About grunion.

I even - this is really awesome - I even met with a composer to discuss what I’ve come up with so far. He didn’t seem all that impressed about the grunion, but that’s okay. What I found cool was that he wasn’t even interested in hearing the MP3 my composing program (Finale) had generated. He just spread out the notes and heard it that way. That is not something I can do, so I was impressed.

[Edit: I tried breathing yesterday. It makes a huge difference. I had thought, Great, breathing, a third thing to worry about besides left hand /intonation and right hand / bowing. But it actually seemed to lessen the panic and /or frustration I often feel while playing, and was really groovy.]

My cello teacher told me to play the tune I’m working on faster. I’ve got the intonation down more or less, just need to work  on the bowing (as always) and the tempo. My learning process is this sort of global bringing all the millions of elements into focus thing.

So, I will work onthis. That, and making it actually sound like actual music. Unfortunately that comes last with me. It’s as if I can’t relax and play something (somewhat) musically unless I know everything else is working. Also, serious coordination deficits, I suspect.

God.

I blame the amalgam fillings.

I am wondering, though, whether it might also be adviseable to seek, or compose, tunes more in line with my character, or nature - which is it? - and whether that might involve something extremely slow and drone-like, at least at the moment (a moment that has lasted, so far, decades).

Something slow, and procrastinating, but also persistent and perseverent.

Zoe Keating has a neat number on what I believe is her latest album, which plays at I think one-quarter the speed it was originally recorded at.

At.

It sounds real neat.

Also, I am totally at sea in my quest to find the right combination of effects pedals for my electric cello. Jacob has been very helpful with his patient advice, but in the end it comes down to, I guess, carting the thing to a shop and trying some out. Or carting it somewhere else and trying some out. And I suck so badly that I have serious inhibitions about trying anything out in public.

So I have been killing time watching demos on youtube of various pedals I have googled or otherwise found. I am, on the one hand, looking for something to add a little grit and character to the instrument’s sound, and on the other hand looking for something with a maximum of flexibility re: the parameters one can adjust and change.

I bought a cheap distortion pedal on ebay a while back, I have mentioned it before, and discovered that what works for a guitar works differently for a bowed instrument. It makes a fun noise, but is not adjustable enough, in the end, although I do love its ability to receive Russian short-wave transmissions when plugged into the theremin. It’s like ET phoning home.

I’ve been looking at moogerfooger demos, but due to the guitar/cello discrepancy and their expense am at something of a loss since local shops stock only a few of the models and not usually the ones I’m most interested in, so even if I did find the guts, and time to try them out, the actual ones I’m interested in would not be available.

Meh.

Bleat.

Research conclusion: garden clippers go way more easily through the tip of your left ring finger than they do through rose canes.

On a related note, got less cello practice in this weekend than I’d planned for. So I fired up the theremin instead, as my wife was out of town. Turns out when I run it through my distortion pedal, I get Russian short wave radio. Even when the theremin is turned off. The pedal itself, with all the other cords, cables and wiring, appears to suffice.

“Do you think you’re profiting from these lessons,” my cello teacher asked me the day before yesterday. I was a little gobsmacked. I mean,  I’ve been wondering the same thing, but why was he asking? Does he want to break up with me? Is he being contrite? I didn’t get it and said something vague.

But the truth is that my improvement has been marginal ten years of this and I’m still absolutely musically clueless. My technique is bad as is everything else. I have a nice cello, though, in a nice red hard case.

It is somewhat frustrating. It would be more frustrating were I to have actual musical goals I was wanting to accomplish, but when I try to visualize a goal all I get is haze.  Maybe there’s a kind of musical dyslexia and I have it.

That would be nice, because it would be an excuse, rather than insufficient practice and impatience. Largely, though, I guess it’s pretty much mea culpa. A few brief, unfocused practice sessions per week doesn’t cut it. My teacher hasn’t been much help, he’s been pretty nice and patient and forgiving until now, whereas what I probably needed part of the time was a mean little old Russian lady with a willow switch making me play scales until my fingers bled.

I’ve bought a book of etudes I’m trying to work through. I bought a book of scales I’m going to try to work on, although, I am ashamed to admit, I am still shaky on the whole concept of key signatures and other basic music theory.

Also my bowing sucks and my breathing is ridiculous. I’ve started hatha yoga and that ought to help with the latter.

My intonation is okay. So-so. Second and third fingers a little close together, but if I concentrate on that it’s okay.

I say ten years.  I do think so. Ten years is a long time.

On my end of the process, I would have to guess that insufficient practice and a lack of any sort of vision of what I really want to do are my main problems. My original goal was to find out how a cello works. So what now? I blindly stumbled into playing in an orchestra. Maybe playing competently in an orchestra? Playing specific pieces competently?

Understanding what the hell is going on? Maybe that’s asking too much.

So it’s been what, nine years roughly. And my teacher just now shows me this thing, a composition for three or more cellos, four basic patterns to be played at will, over and over, composed in such a way that no matter which patterns you play, or how you play them, they sound good together. And I was all, Wow, because I could, for once, not freak out about reading the notes or my intonation, I could concentrate on hearing and making the music.

And I was all, motherfucker, why didn’t you show me this nine years ago? And defenestrated him, finally.

Actually, I was all, why do these sound good together? and he was all, Pentatonic scale. And I was all, Ahah.

Because I’d had an idea for a composition that worked roughly that way (patterns played at will) but got busy with something else.

I was talking to a guitar-teacher friend who said improvisation is the highest form of music and I said, yeah, but you have to know what you’re doing and he said, What about you and the theremin? and I said, WTF is it with you music teachers? Actually, I said, I’m not claiming that’s a high form of music, what I do with the theremin. His point with the theremin was, most players are improvising without actually mastering the instrument, which is probably correct.

Where was I? Pentatonic notes on the cello. It sounded beautiful. I could play that all day long. I was all, This is why I’m studying this here instrument.

Shakespeare’s Father: Forsooth, my lad, thou weep’st more loudly than a maid at the deathbed of her betroth’d!

Shakespeare: Father, verily, I beg thee, rein in thy anger and desist in your violence!

Shakespeare’s Father: Aye, thou dar’st call that violence! Weep’st thou? Weep’st thou? Wilt thou sound reason for weeping? Thou maid! Shall I provide thee with sound reason for weeping? Verily, I shall fetch mine girdle and give thee sound reason for weeping!

Everything sounds better in Shakespeare.  Now if I could only remember what this was supposed to segue into…

But, no luck.

Did your dad used to threaten to get the belt when you were a kid, too?

Damn, it’s gone.

I was out of town with the orchestra this weekend. I was awfully sad most of the time, despite the fact that our rehearsals were held in a castle in a nice little town in a nice scenic area and I didn’t get lost driving there. I had a nice room, pleasant roommate, the food was awful but that’s not high on my list of priorities. It snowed, and that was pretty.

The rehearsal rooms were big enough and the acoustics were good. But the entire time I sat there feeling sad and thinking that playing the cello is, for me, like being married to a beautiful woman who will never love me. And I thought back on my cello career, and how the predominant emotion I associate with it is despair and not joy, which made me wonder whether now would be a good time to look for a new hobby.

I was seated next to a young woman who was a far better cellist than I am, with wicked technique. Very crisp bowing, which made it necessary to pay close attention to my own bowing to avoid collisions i.e. accidentally bowing in the wrong direction and poking her. At first it was just more stress and the vast difference between her ability and mine added to my despair, but then I noticed that I had learned more about bowing in the few hours I had been playing next to her than I had in the past several years, and my perspective began to change.

I plugged in my theremin during a break and various people goofed around with it.  I sometimes forget that not everyone is familiar with the theremin. It was fun to watch people try it out.

While brushing my teeth I noticed in the mirror that I still have paint flecks on my glasses from painting a room at our house weeks ago, but every time I remove the glasses to clean them, the paint flecks are no longer visible.

We played our first concert of the season on Sunday, in an excellent venue, in a new building with fine acoustics and a stage large enough for the orchestra. The only thing missing was an audience. We played, let’s see, works by Haydn, Beethoven, Kodaly, Bizet, and um… Bartok.  The orchestra played very well. It was too bad that so few people came to hear us, but maybe eleven AM on a Sunday is not the best time for concerts.

It was great fun to play with so many talented kids.  I made relatively few mistakes, and nothing really awful. The teachers who run the show are all brilliant, and our conductor is especially wonderful.

Another concert next week, and the week after that we go on tour to Italy. For a weekend, but still.

So it’s all very nice, but my relationship with the cello remains as desperate as ever. I really don’t know whether to stick with it, or change to the double bass (a slightly heavier, plainer woman who might or might not love me), or spend more time with the ukulele (a woman who is in a good mood all the time) or what. Maybe look for a new metaphor.

So Beta signed me up for the orchestra. Or, rather, I was automatically signed up as a student at the music school (it’s just a little amateur music school orchestra full, mostly, of kids and some adults) and Beta twisted my arm and said I had to try it this year.

So I said okay, thinking the concert was, I don’t know, sometime way off, in another century. But it is in April, it now appears, which sounds far off but is in fact not too much more than a month from now.

The cello section had its first practice last weekend. There are seven celli. Two of the kids are children of friends. Two of the girls in the group are quite good, one of the boys is nearly as good, at least he can keep up. Another girl never gets yelled at, and two freckled boys appear to be worse than me, at least they kept getting upbraided and I didn’t.

The way I see it, if all goes well I will learn all the parts and do okay. If things do not go well, I’ll just sit in the back and fake it, as there are 6 other celli to take up the slack.

I realize, of course, that there are at least two little boys thinking the same thing, and perhaps one girl, but that leaves three, maybe four competent celli so no big worry, I imagine. Plus there are enough bass players to fill things out.

It is a real ass kicking experience, that I can tell you after a single practice of only the cello section. But I went into it without having practiced anything even once. All the notes I saw there I had seen for the first time. It was very much the holy shit this looked easier than it actually is experience.

The first practice involving, theoretically, the entire orchestra is next week. I can’t wait.