2009-02-07 - 12:46 p.m.

...huh, I kinda remember this d-land thing...

I can't think of anything more tedious than to write down everything that I've been doing for the past two weeks. Except, perhaps, to be forced to read it. So I'm trying to check in here, with the hopes that I can be inspired into pithy randomness.

One thing has marked the entire week though - I haven't been able to get the Lonely Goatherd Song out of my bleepin' head! Have pity. have pity. Do re mi.

Actually, over the past week, I've had isolated moments of thought about friends from the past. Oo, I remember when she and I used to do that. And then I would think, what a nice thing it would be to preserve that thought by writing it down in d-land. huh. oops. Well, most of those thoughts have trickled on down the drain. Maybe they will make their way out to sea and be found elsewhere.

I've just thought of an example of that - when I was in college, I lived in a co-ed literary fraternity. We used to have weekly story telling events and as a group we were given weekly creative writing assignments that we shared amongst ourselves. We had a gigantic blog of clay by the front door, aptly named "Blob." Blob was in a constant state of metamorphosis.

But what I remembered this week was the piano bar we had in the basement. Not an ACTUAL piano bar that you would see in a 1960s vintage Cary Grant / Rock Hudson movie. But an old, upright piano that was useless - so we gutted it, painted it various shades of purple, and stored our alcohol in it. We'd pull it out for parties - and all bartenders were required to wear bow ties. I don't remember why I thought about that.

We had another piano upstairs, which, in terms of its ability to produce music, hadn't fared much better. It was an old clunky upright that used to be a player piano. Some of the keys didn't play. Yet, we faithfully played it. One of my 'brothers' was the son of a piano tuner. I remember his tireless work at tuning that little guy. It never played very well, though.

Still, it's the piano I remember playing from time to time in the lounge. I especially remember sharing the seat with one of my 'sisters' as we played through a beloved Beethoven sonata. I still love that Sonata, although I really don't have much time to play it.

Apart from feeling stressed and overwhelmed this week, I've continued to have a sense of sadness about the absence of music from my life. There is a dearth of neighborhood music groups in Funcouver - or rather a dearth of groups for the skilled amateur. Perhaps the longer I wait to join a group, the less skilled I will be, and eventually I'll fit into one of the two groups that does exist. We'll see. I miss a place to sing and a place to play, and a place to dance. And I miss the time to do it on my own. Sigh.

Anyway, I'd like to end on a positive note. So I'll include a link to the most hysterical blog entry I've seen in a while. Fortunately, the trauma of the 70's was too great for me to remember wearing any of these.