August 24, 1999

poke poke

my piano is really starting to sound like crap. to a point where even i can't stand to practice on it.

i consider myself pretty tolerant of out-of-tune instruments and flaccid key action.

as my piano salesman and i discussed in remarkable depth, classical musicians don't give a crap about sound quality or audio fidelity; i've known this since 1987, when i first heard a Raoul Pugno recording (from 1903, i think) and was short of breath from that glimpse into another generation, another time of piano playing.

whenever i tell anyone what kind of piano i own (a Baldwin) i have to force myself from laughing at what my sister said when i told her i had a Baldwin. she said "So it doesn't have any hair?"

har har har

MY GODDAM RADIO IS BLARING OVER MY HEAD AND TO THE RIGHT, GODDAM BEETHOVEN EROICA SYMPHONY LEONARD GODDAM BERNSTEIN, AND IT IS GOING TO STAY UP THERE UNTIL I GET OFF MY BIG FAT ASS AND GET THE REMOTE CONTROL, WHEREVER THE HELL THAT IS.

any time i hit that C above middle C i wince, but then look to the future. in the future i will have a fine Petrof 55" monster, a sprawling loft in brooklyn with 6 pianos and countless seven-foot windows, nobody to bother me or complain or say contrived, snotty things about my lifestyle.

i've been re-discovering late Beethoven the last several days. and i can not find a single person with whom i can talk about it. either music has to have a beat to be worth shit, or Beethoven is just some dusty rag from high school lectures.

i am told that statistically, among women who favor it under certain circumstances, Beethoven would have been aborted before birth. what with the club foot and whatever other deformities.

Beethoven's opus 111 has been filling every spare minute of my days these past weeks. for as long as that 2nd movement carries on and on and on it is hard to imagine how it could ever end, or why anyone would want it to end.

so many passages of high honor and tender bitterness. there is not one note of that music you can not turn over and over and over and over.

i've been so starved for a decent conversation about classical music the past several months that, as of yesterday, i seriously considered signing up for "classical music lover's exchange."

but i re-considered, remembering that it was the same inspiration in 1991 that drove me to spend so many days and weeks and a couple of goddam years sitting around Lincoln Center spouting forth talk of Schoenberg and Liszt to whatever unbelievably elderly person sat next to me at those Out of Doors events.

i don't have any regrets or insecurity about owning a Baldwin. like most things in my life, i don't take care of it, and let if rot and whimper under the force of my daily beating and abuse.

i'm still angry at Moishe's (the moving company) for ripping the front left leg off like it was a stick of kindling, and basically laughing in my face about it. Moishe's also lost my big, vast, sprawling metal desk to the bowels of 509 East 78th Street -- because they could not get it out the door.

bah... don't get me started. so much and so many things about moving to Atlanta (and moving right back) still anger me.

well, there is so much more to say, but the night is growing cold.