I have begun to scratch backs.
Family members only, so far.
I find doing so increases the likelihood they will scratch mine.
This morning, for instance, Gamma was all, Left. Left. Higher. Yes. Now all over.
We took a delivery of wood this morning. A man driving a tractor backed a long green side-dumping trailer into our driveway at 7 AM and side-dumped three cubic meters of firewood. It made a real noise. Our cats were skittish for quite some time afterwards.
Gamma didn’t want to listen to my recording of Anner Bylsma playing Bach cello suites before school, so we played a few hands of rummy instead. Then we debated the pros (whee!) and cons (against the rules) of her riding her scooter to school. I walked her to school scooterless and drove to work.
I listened to the classical radio station but the music was boring so I listened to Anner Bylsma playing Bach’s cello suites because it is nice music and I am trying to learn the prelude.
I listened and listened and had to smile because you know what? Parts of what I play now are beginning to sound remotely like parts of what he plays. Or, when I listen to what he plays, I can now understand parts.
Only parts; other parts are still all WTF? But still, now it’s like listening to a language one speaks badly spoken fast, rather than a language one speaks not at all spoken in a train driving the opposite direction from the train you’re on.
I listened for quite a while, until I had a feeling I hadn’t had since I was 19 or 20 and in a cheap hotel room in Vancouver BC with thin walls next door to a man seemingly dying of emphysema but determined to cough out lobes of each lung beforehand. Coughing and coughing, non-stop.
It was that same feeling, the feeling of being next door to that guy in the crappy hotel room, except instead of the dying guy it was Anner Bylsma playing the cello.
Otherwise, the same.
So I turned off Anner and listened to the radio some more. Nothing wrong with Anner. He just needs a break. Next Easter when Isserlis publishes his recording of Bach’s suites I’ll have a little party and compare the two or something.
Anyway on the radio: Bach. Just like what Anner had just been playing, only on another instrument.
It sounded like the fricking Prelude, and it sounded like a banjo.
I was all, that must be a mandolin or something classy. But wouldn’t it be cool for someone that good to play Bach on a banjo?
When the song was finished, the DJ said it was B