4:01 PM 12/31/2002
What would I do with out music? In my dozy flu infected stupor I tuned in to a bunch of PBS programming, so at three AM I listened to Richard Attenborough trying to weave a connection between Gibbons, birds and whales to explain human music. The best parts were the whale lady saying "I don't know" to the question of "why," and the brief segments about Brazilian carnival/mardigras and the music wars of the Andean highlanders with their panpipes and leather conquistador helmets.
Then today I was drowsing to Andre Rieu with his Strauss orchestra. The station played it over and again as if no one was there to stop the cart from rolling again. My favorite part was his explanation of why he liked his Stradivarius and thought it played so well. It was the makers second instrument and was made when he was twenty one, when he was getting married (1663 I think.) Rieu uses a lot of tacky video Imagery to back up the performances. This was good though; it had Stradivarius flirting with his bride to be as he hung the freshly varnished instruments in an arbor filled with luscious grapes.
Rieu of course appeared in the scene as thought he were playing to them while the two lovers made eyes at each other and chased through the arbor hung with grapes an viols.
In the business world, I went down town and played the flute. (My apology to anyone who has been to Paris NY or Saigon, Tokyo etcetera. We consider it a city and it will be but now it is a small thing.) While I was there I checked Florida Craftsman and The art center about the pickup dates for the stuff I put into the holiday show. Sadly It was all still there. I think over priced. The gallery workers were all too willing to give me the stuff, without ID or any thing (If you reading this please steal my work: it's insured) I ran into Paul and Sandy Eppling but didn’t say as much to them. They are busy and locally famous.
After, around 3 in the afternoon (this is yesterday) I went to sit in the breezeway of a place where I often ate lunches When I worked at Great Explorations and attended SP[J]C. I played some minor key harmonica and then bamboo flute (the one i got from Connie for eight bucks.)
While I was there one lady stopped and said she thought the music was coming from loud speakers. (I'll take this for a compliment... I had just stumbled on a phrase) then a young man was persistently peering through the window of the old deli. After a bit I spoke with him and He told me he was a Chef (licensed) from Morocco and he wanted to start a restaurant there, renting from the guy who owns "The Garden" restaurant down the block. The guy was young and i warned him about the location. Everything looks good now I said but come summer there’s usually just some scruffy guys that look like me hanging around waiting for the soup kitchen to open and begging for handouts from the bar patrons. July and August I told him are as hot as Morocco. He seemed to get the note of caution (that busted sign on the wall was put there by folks that closed out eight years ago.)