Life, Love, the Piano, and Various Obscure Mythological References

Even though I'm currently without a teacher (my last one moved to Seattle) I've been practicing as much as possible, shoehorning keyboard mangling in the aftermath of a recent 350-mile transmigration from Indiana and subsequent lifestyle adjustments. Add to this meeting the person with whom I want to spend the rest of forever, and scrabbling to re-establish my business, and convincing my paranoid feline this is NOT the place where they kill cats. Sneaking in practice has been a formidable exercise. Not quite as laborious as Hercules swabbing out the dung-encrusted Aegean Stables, or Sisyphus shoving his rock up Mount Hades, but somewhat trickier than matching your socks in the dark or alphabetizing your Victorian erotic flower collection.

One thing I've learned about Indiana, especially Bloomington (code-named "Mordor" by my friends and family) is that people don't move to Indiana, they move away from it. I've joined the rank of escapees and returned to my hometown Knoxville Tennessee. It is a great enablement that my sweet lady seems to like my piano. Support, validation and approval within a relationship is such a new and awe-inspiring sensation that I haven't quite worked out an appropriate response. "Thank you," seems inadequate, and even "I love you," only expresses a tiny drop of the gratitude and wonder. I don't think most women realize how much her man desires her approval. This is why knights of old went off on heroic quests: to earn the admiration of their ladies.

 I think many people expend a considerable amount of time and energy, like Pygmalion with his Galatea, trying to remould their partner into the perfect mate. I've always felt a woman should love the man she has, not a fantasy-construction embodying the best qualities of Ryan Gosling, Gandhi, and Steve Tyler. And the same applies to guys, of course. Stop fantasizing about whoever is on the cover of MAXIM this month and love your own lady. So what happens when you meet the perfect partner, already crafted through the machinations of genetics, experience and karma, and you wouldn't change a thing about this enchanting creation? I can't speak for anyone else, but I call it home.

But enough rhapsodizing about matters of the heart; let's look at the piano. The piano survived the seven-hour drive from Bloomington to Knoxville, and I will tell you I didn't feel settled until I moved my piano and my cat. Currently I'm working on Music of the Night and David Lanz's arrangement of Whiter Shade of Pale. The latter piece, originally released by Procol Harum, has a lovely melodic line based on J.S. Bach's Air on the G String from the Orchestral Suite Number Three. It also incorporates the most difficult left-hand chords I've ever attempted. Most of them are tenths, and playing a tenth is the outer extreme of my hand span. I have to play these chords on the very edge of the keys so I don't slur the chords through the addition of unwanted notes. It's much fun to practice techniques that stretch you--in this case, literally--and witness incremental improvement day by day. The Andrew Lloyd Weber arrangement of Music of the Night is relatively easy and I have about 2/3rds of it licked.

I'm also playing with some blues material my friend Charles Scott sent me.  My goal this year is to find a new teacher and learn blues and jazz.

Vacation starts tomorrow, and the lady and I are traveling to various lovely locations. I also am very close, the month of May to be exact, to my third year as a pianist.

Divorced Again? Naturally.

Hot on the heels of my recent third divorce, I get asked this a lot: "Why do you keep getting married?"  My response is that just because you don't get something right the first time, it doesn't mean you should give up. It's like if you buy a dog, and the dog eventually dies, you think, "Well, I'll never buy another dog. They die." Not that spouses are like dogs. Unless, of course, they are, but that's the topic of next week's Dr Phil: "Is your man a dog?"

Some of my hipper Buddhist friends say in response to my admittedly disastrous romantic past, "Everything's impermanent," meaning, I assume, that these marriages were bound to end someday. Impermanence is often interpreted to mean that things end. I've had a lot of experience with things apparently ending, and I think that this is not true. Marriages may end, but the relationship doesn't. It changes. Sometimes even within a relationship, the changes can be radical. Sometimes these changes are survivable; sometimes not.

I've never been one to give up, on anything. Failure isn't an option. At age fifty I went back to college to finish a degree I left hanging thirty years ago, and begun seriously studying piano, the first music lessons of my life. I finished that degree, so now I have three college degrees, none of which are currently marketable but my head is full of all kinds of arcane knowledge.

Last semester my Italian teacher asked me if I was ever going to marry again. I answered, "Amo le donne," ('I love women,") and she laughed. "You will, then." And I might. I'm neither bitter nor disappointed. Furthermore, I'm in love. Like I said, amo le donne, I so amo le donne very much, one in particular who.has been like the light coming on in a dark room for me. Or a lovely piece of music you suddenly hear from out of nowhere.

Speaking of music (and aren't we?) The first piece of "classical" (actually Baroque) piece of music I fell in love with was J.S. Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto, and I fell head-over-heels with it. It was played from a scratchy LP by my seventh grade music teacher. I related this on my blog Fifty Year Old Pianist and how something inside me awakened forever. I asked all kinds of questions about this piece, who wrote it, was there more. My music teacher was impressed, although all my friends thought I was insane.

The joy and passion of this piece still awakens my heart. It just soars from variation to variation. I like to think Bach was in love when he composed this, as it is the music I hear in my heart when I'm with the one I love.

blah blah blah

School, Piano, etc.

I don't have my usual "oomph" this semester. Kinda dragging through, doing the required work and my mid-term reviews were all 'As' except, of course, Italian, and after performing the calculations required to convert the strange point system they've substituted into the one the rest of the world uses, it looks like I'm running my usual shaky 'B' in there. But the stress of managing classes where most of the work is essentially unchallenging busy-work and balancing my work, along with personal issues, is taking its toll, I think.

By unchallenging, let me give an example. I have a core requirement called "Depth of Inquiry," which is a choice of classes designed to hone and refine the analytical skills of freshmen. I took "Eyes and Vision," which is a fairly interesting class involving the history of vision research, involving the investigations of ancient Greeks, the Renaissance masters, Isaac Newton,  Descartes, etc. Fine so far, except the class scrapes the very thinnest epidermal layer of these mighty intellects. Okay, I understand it's a survey class. But now get this: we get a weekly study guide with the answers to the tests. Basically it's a list of questions with asterisks next to the questions that are going to be on the test. So we look up the answers, fill them in, and remember them for the quizzes and tests.

I've also discovered all the art classes--and I've taken three so far--all teach the same things. They have a party-line and you can pretty much learn everything they have to teach in about three weeks.  My senior-level Drawing Class (Drawing IV) has non-majors in it. To my surprise. And these people, not to hold it against them, can draw about as well as my four-year-old-niece.  As I said, I don't hold it against them, as they're neither artists nor art majors, but they're in the same class as I, who am both.

My ennui seems to be shared by my fellow students. Last spring semester had an air of electric desperation about it, as we all struggled to keep up with the assignments and to outdo ourselves. This fall, everyone has a "whatever" cloud of indifference hovering over them.

Of course, my particular dissatisfaction stems from m growing realization that IU, and possibly all universities, is operating a scam on the level of a time-share operation. I transferred to IU with 120 credits. You need 121 to graduate. But the credits from my former colleges weren't up to the exalted standards of IU, because they prefer transfer students have at least 20 hours on campus. Very well. That's a couple of semesters.

THREE semesters later, they're still adding classes to my requirements. I applied to the Individualized Major Program because apparently in order to get a BFA, I would have to begin all over as a freshman. Never mind my 120 credits--it's a long story. But the IMP program would allow me to use them. I would be out in two more easy semesters. Or so it would seem.

I put together a proposal that meets (actually exceeds) the requirements for graduation for IU, my proposed major: Literary Illustration. Translation: Writing and illustrating my own books. I submitted a draft and it was "suggested" that I and my adviser consider expanding my proposal to include three or more classes outside my major to add diversity. Understand two points: (1) there are already core requirements for diversity which I have already met (2) three or more classes adds at least one more semester. Remember that Time-share scam? I have no doubt in my mind that even if I do this, I'll apply for graduation to be told I need to take one more semester of something or other, and it will be some easy, totally BS class like Kenyan Folk Dance, because due to a new university policy one or more of my transferred classes are no longer an acceptable replacement for cultural diversity. No doubt. In my mind.

Bottom line is this. I don't need this degree, it's unfinished business from my past which would give me personal satisfaction to close. If my proposal is refused or addenda are suggested, I'll thank them for their time and this will be my last semester at IU. After all, it's not like there's a job waiting for me at the end of this. I'm a guy ten years away from retirement, and a degree in Literary Illustration ain't going to make me a hot ticket. I'll mourn over not finishing my business, but I'm not going to be scammed just to get a piece of paper.

But I may be tilting at windmills. It may all work out and my next big life achievement will be the world's only person holding a degree in Literary Illustration. We'll see.

Cristofori's Dream

I  finally got this sounding fairly good. It's a little clunky in spots but overall. not too shabby.

Another Semester Smoked

Summer Semester I took two classes, one four-week intensive (Ethnomusicology) and one eight-week intensive (The Craft of Fiction). I learned,in the former, about all sorts of ethnic music in America. In the second class, I wrote all kinds of essays about various works of fiction. I got an A+ in the first class and an A in the second.

Fall Semester has started and I have three classes: Drawing Four, Italian II, and The History of Eye, Vision and Brain Theory.  Off to a good start.

In piano news, plugging away, working of theory, dexterity and various pieces including a jazz version of Over the Rainbow, a piece of music I seem to be obsessed with.

Ciao!

Summer Semester: Its Horrors

I had a month off between semesters so I decided to work on Joplin a bit more and add--get this--SYNCOPATED peddling.  Yes indeed.  Syncopated peddling to an already syncopated piece of music.  After driving myself insane for about three days, it finally clicked, sort of, and is sounding fairly good.

Summer semester began yesterday and what was I thinking?  I took two classes, not difficult subjects really but Summer term is an entire semester compressed in to four weeks.  Which means each day covers one unit.  When I came home and began the homework for both classes, I realized doing a week's worth of homework for two classes in one evening was insane.  I can do it but the next month is going to be hectic.

So what if I won't sleep or get anything else done?  I'll have two more core requirements out of the way, which means (drum roll) ALL of them will be out of the way.

You can survive anything for a month, eh?

EH?