December 3

Music and other lessons

1964

Music class was awful! I was tired and just didn’t play too well and made a lot of stupid mistakes. In fact, I “lost” the last note in “Waltzer” by Grieg and it took me five minutes to find it on that stupid piano.

I found just the right gift for Dad - a four-record set of “The Messiah”. The problem is that it’s on sale at Grand-Way and we never get there.

I blabbed in the car again. Ray C. and Kathy G. were there and I was so nervous I just talked my head off.

Comment 2022

I come from a musical family. My mother played the piano and had a beautiful soprano voice. Dad was a self-taught pianist with a huge stack of popular sheet music from the 1920s through the 60s. He also was the perennial tenor solo at Christmas Eve services; I wish I had a recording of his “O Holy Night”. My brother Bob plays several instruments, writes songs, and is the resident blues man around North Bay, Ontario. I love music, and longed to play and sing as well as the rest of the family. But I never had my mother’s ability to read music, or my Dad’s enthusiasm for performing. My brother got the piano lessons, and a bit of instrumental training, as well (clarinet and Sousaphone). I got a deep streak of stage fright and one school year of piano with an elderly church organist.

So when a local girls’ boarding school invited my high school to send interested students for performing arts lessons (for free!), I eagerly signed up for music. My brother signed up for drama, and two other students joined us for the long drive every Thursday afternoon. There were just two of us in the music class; the other student was a boy from a different school who played the drums. The teacher, clearly unsure what to do with us, decided to give each of us private piano lessons, with a joint lesson on recorders in between. He assigned me classical pieces that were definitely above the John W. Schaum book two where the organist had left off. This particular lesson I was playing that piece by Grieg, got to the end and couldn’t locate the right key for the last note. He let me sit, looking at the music, and then at the keyboard for several minutes. I finally found it, but by then I was shaking and close to tears. Fortunately, it was time to go home.

Maybe that’s why I stuck in the non sequitur about the present for Dad right in the middle of an entry about music class. On the way home, Bob was driving, the other two students were sitting quietly, and I was babbling. I wish I could say that this was my last experience with stage fright, but it was not.

1984

I’m down to the wire with my National Museum Association proposal…just close enough to get me nervous. A couple of things are on the dept chair’s desk waiting for her, but I may have to just go ahead and have them typed up, and hope she doesn’t have any comments, since we are almost out of time.

The semester ends in a week and half. Hallelujah!

1998

I have been pleasantly busy, though neglecting my body and soul “rooms”. I grab some reading or meditation time here and there. And I have been walking a lot because it is so beautiful outside.

The trees are nearly bare now, except for the usual clusters of oak leaves. The sky is so gray today! For the last week it’s been unseasonably warm, which I do not enjoy, but there it is.

I am enjoying this sabbatical too much. The house is neat and clean, we are eating well, I am surging with creative energy, and the dogs are spoiled rotten. I want it to always be this way. How can I hang on to it next year?

Comment 2023

You can’t. But you can retire in twenty years and that’s very like a sabbatical.