Thought I Felt a Bump

I’m having a fun day.

I had an accident in the church parking lot after the revival. It was after eleven, and I was dying to get home. I saw a car parked next to my truck, and I looked at it as I passed, and then I got in the truck, turned the wheel, and ran my tire into the car’s left front corner. I was exhausted, I guess. I can’t explain it any other way.

My truck had a flat tire, a scratch, and a gouged-up rim. The car…ouch. No bumper. Two headlights gone. One fender mashed beyond hope.

While I was in the parking lot, at the edge of the ghetto, struggling to change a tire in the dark, two of my friends came out and helped. One of them refused to let me tighten the lug nuts, which was a real job. Very nice of him to do it for me. I was about to drop.

I was so tired, I forgot I was carrying, and I took off my flannel shirt. I guess I looked pretty weird out there, wallowing around on the pavement with a Glock on my hip.

It turned out the car belonged to another security guy. Being a big Christian, he was all worried about me and my problems. He didn’t want me to get a ticket or have insurance aggravation. We decided to handle it ourselves. Today I had to go to a body shop in Opa-Locka to hand over a 50% deposit on the work.

It wasn’t all that much. I was surprised.

I felt really bad for him. I told him to make sure he went to a place that would do a good job. He went to three places, trying to get a good price, but I told him not to worry about that, because I wanted it done right.

It turned out there were a couple of things I could do for him. He’s having midterm exams, and he said he had had “bad luck” all month. Someone borrowed his scooter and didn’t bring it back. So I’m putting in time, praying for him. And I found something else I could do for him. I had something lying around which he can use.

When the accident happened, I told him not to worry, because it was going to turn out to be a blessing for both of us. I was sure of it. God was not going to let us leave a 3-day revival, where we worked long hours without pay, only to be punished for it. Something good will come of it. I’m not worried at all.

I got a tour of Opa-Locka today. What a weird area. There are a lot of big lots up there. It’s surprising. There are homes that should be very nice, but because of the area, they’re not exactly in demand.

The body guy is named Conroy. I found the shop where he works, and I gave him the check and got a receipt. He tried to help me with my wheel. He got in the truck, and he took me to a few places, but nobody had the right wheel. Says he’s from Jamaica. I invited him to come to church this Sunday, and he may show up.

He gave me an estimate on fixing the bad paint and the new scratch on my truck. If he does a good job on the car, I may let him do it. I also need some Moto Guzzi side covers painted, and he says he can do that.

I ended up driving to Hub Cap Heaven, near the county line. The road was under repair, so I had to wait in a long line of cars. No wheel, naturally. But they’ll call me if they find one.

Came home and tried to get my new chuck working so I could put it on my new rotary table. The gears were balking. I emailed the seller, and he said it was probably dried oil. I knew that wasn’t true, but I opened it up one more time to make sure there was nothing I could fix, and while I was opening the jaws, the chuck balked, and it twisted out of my hand and tore up my left thumb. It is surprising how well a 90° edge can cut, when it hasn’t been deburred.

Pouring hydrogen peroxide under the big loose bloody flap of skin was most enjoyable. I hope I get to do that more often in the future. I got it bandaged up and went back to work. When I tightened up the bolts holding the pinions in place, the chuck started working. Thank God.

I put the chuck on the rotab and tried to dial it in on the mill table, but the silly thing doesn’t want to move on the rotab. I don’t know if it sits in a recess or what. I don’t feel like taking it apart to see. My 8″ chuck moved around fine when I hit it with a deadblow hammer, but this one doesn’t want to go anywhere. I abandoned it. Now I’m thinking about ice cream.

I wish I had some super glue so I could try to glue my thumb back together. Sometimes that works.

This is the hidden price for a Chinese bargain.

On the religious front, things are going great. This morning, as usual, I woke up and started praying in the Spirit, but now there is a melody to it. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s back. So I was actually singing in the Spirit, although I was praying silently. This is much better than plain old prayer. It adds a dimension of musical worship.

Robert Morris suggests people sing to God when they spend time in private prayer. It’s a good idea, but it’s not that engaging. It’s very different when the song is part of prayer.

Naturally, I am all freaked out. Again.

It’s like I said. The revival took existing believers to a new level. It’s no joke.

The garlic rolls came out great, although I was too lazy to get real garlic. I used powder, which was still very good. I melted provolone over two rolls. Really sick. Here are photos:

I think this is a fantastic idea. If I added another cheese with more flavor, these would kill. They could be an optional dish at church, with little side containers of pizza sauce and pesto.

Here’s hoping I make it to bedtime with no more lacerations.

The Unlikeliest Pilgrim Speaks

I just got back from church. I was invited to the Monday morning staff chapel at ten a.m. On the way out, I checked the kitchen to see what kind of shape I would be in the next time I wanted to make pizza. While I was there, I got drafted to cook. I produced four pizzas and three dozen garlic rolls, and I ended up leaving at 2:30!

That place has a gravity well. You have to be careful about getting close to it.

I don’t know what to do about recording all the experiences I had when I was in Washington last week. They started weeks before I made the trip, which makes the problem even worse. I have too much material to deal with. God has been driving me crazy.

For weeks, I’ve been asking God to be bold and obvious in my life. It looks like he was listening. I am overwhelmed by the constant flow of remarkable events.

Let’s see.

In 2007 (I think), I got involved with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization which funnels money to needy Jews and which provides aid in Israel. Virtually all of the money comes from Christians. Last year, the local field rep–Linda–called me and asked me to meet with her, and I went. Reluctantly.

It turned out she was a committed Christian who shared many of my beliefs and interests. We became friends. Last year she invited me to visit a Messianic synagogue in Boca, and I went. Since then, I have been trying to get my church involved with the IFCJ, and I have been trying to get people from my church–starting with my prayer group–to visit the synagogue.

We tried to set dates, but people kept cancelling. Finally, we managed to work it out. The leader of my prayer group–John–is the volunteer leader for my church (over 700 volunteers), and all of the guys who went to the synagogue are volunteers.

At the service, the congregation was singing about the jubilee. This is a special year observed by the ancient Jews. After seven weeks of years, on the fiftieth year, they cancelled debts and so on. Here is a passage from Leviticus 25:

And you shall number seven sabbaths of years to you, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty and nine years. Then shall you cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you: you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of your vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.

In the year of this jubilee you shall return every man to his possession. And if you sell ought to your neighbor, or buy ought of your neighbor’s hand, you shall not oppress one another: According to the number of years after the jubilee you shall buy of your neighbor, and according to the number of years of the fruits he shall sell to you: According to the multitude of years you shall increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years you shall diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits does he sell to you. You shall not therefore oppress one another; but you shall fear your God: for I am the LORD your God.

After the singing, the rabbi referred to Jesus (“Yeshua”) as “our jubilee.” And when the teaching began–the subject was the baptism with the Holy Spirit–guess what part of the Bible we heard? Look:

“The Spirit of Adonai is upon me;
therefore he has anointed me
to announce Good News to the poor;
he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the imprisoned
and renewed sight for the blind,
to release those who have been crushed,
to proclaim a year of the favor of Adonai.”
Luke 4:18-19; CJB

Jesus is the speaker. He is reading from Isaiah, in the synagogue at Nazareth. I don’t recall which translation the rabbi used, but the phrase I recall hearing is “the year of God’s favor.”

I knew, without knowing, that “the year of God’s favor” was yet another reference to the jubilee.

As I listened, I took out my driver’s license and showed it to John and to Jo-el, another friend who was sitting to my right. Why would I do that? Because I wanted them to know it was my birthday. My 49th birthday. The first day of my fiftieth year. The year of jubilee.

Coincidence, right?

Remember this: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family.” I feel that I am experiencing a time of intense restoration. Things that were taken from me and my family are being returned. Telling this story disrupts the chronology of this blog entry, but I don’t see any way to avoid it.

A week or two before the service, fellow blogger Richard from It Baffles Science sent me a startling email, recounting his testimony. I wrote about it here. God is repairing his marriage and leading him out of his destructive habits. He is doing shocking things as he works to bring Richard and his family into the safety of obedience and faith. I was so amazed, I forwarded the email to three Christians. One was Linda. In her response, she asked if I was free to go to DC in May.

I called her, and she told me the IFCJ had some seats at the National Day of Prayer, and they were inviting some donors. There was also going to be a tour of the Holocaust Memorial, a dinner with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (founder of the IFCJ), and an invitation to the Ninth Annual Solidarity Event at the Israeli Embassy, where we would hear the ambassador speak to a small group!

I had no idea what the Naitonal Day of Prayer was, and I didn’t really want to spend money and go to Washington, but the invitation sounded like God’s favor to me, so I agreed. I figured there had to be a purpose.

I was not happy about spending money for airline tickets, but I got online and started looking. Fares were really cheap. And when I mentioned the trip to my dad, he suggested giving me the tickets for my birthday. Crazy.

Guess who happens to live in DC? Mike. I gave him a call, and he said he would be available during the week I would be in DC. He offered free lodging (that part didn’t pan out), and of course, he would run me around and find stuff for us to do. I let Linda know, and she got him invitations to the events! He has never had anything to do with the IFCJ. If you don’t think God does weird, obvious things to people, this should prove you’re wrong.

I’ve been trying to get Mike to try an Assemblies of God church near his home. I don’t know much about churches up there, but I found one with a nice website. Trinity Assembly of God, in Lanham, Maryland. Just happens to have the same name as my church. Mike and I made plans to visit Trinity on Sunday. The events took place on Thursday and Friday.

The night before the trip, I decided to dust off my MP3 player and put some more music in it for the flight. I added several albums and some Christian teaching (Perry Stone), but when I tried to add the last recordings, a Ricky Skaggs two-CD set, I found that the disks were missing. I had no idea where they were. I gave up and went to bed.

It was a little odd that I was trying to add Ricky Skaggs. I rarely listen to him, but on that night, I felt like it was time to rip his CDs.

I dreaded the flight. I hate the screening process, and I don’t like airline seats much, because they’re built for pear-shaped people with all their weight in their rear ends. But at the airport, there was no line when I checked in, the screening process was quick and painless, and I had the odd sensation that I was floating as I walked to the gate. Everything around me seemed clean and bright. When I took my seat, I found I had a whole row to myself. The trip was a breeze. The airport in Baltimore was another great surprise. It was quiet and clean, and it seemed almost empty. I had no delays at all.

Mike and I fiddled around all afternoon. We went to a Salvation Army thrift store to check out their cast iron cookware inventory, we visited his son’s school, and we tried Rita’s Italian Ice. This is a chain that sells gourmet ice and soft-serve ice cream. I couldn’t believe how good it was. I had a gelati made with strawberry custard ice cream and wild black cherry ice. At Rita’s, “gelati” means ice cream on the top and bottom, with ice in the middle. I fell in love immediately. I think we had Rita’s four times before I went home.

The next morning, at nine a.m., I was inside the Cannon Office Building on Capitol Hill. This is where they held the DC event for the National Day of Prayer. I would say the room held three hundred people. It was about fifty feet by a hundred, by my guess. The cable networks were there. Michele Bachmann was seated about ten feet away, in the row in front of me. I didn’t recognize all the Senators and Congressmen who were there, but I know there were at least two. And here I was. The nearly nonexistent guy with the tool blog.

I wish I could recall everyone who spoke. James Dobson and his wife were running the show. Gary Bauer was there. We heard from a Navy admiral and an army chaplain. The Cactus Cuties sang the national anthem and God Bless America. The main speaker was Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham.

They also had male musical performers. Early on, I had noticed an old hippie up front. He had long silver hair. At first, I had no idea who he was. I had him figured for an official from a liberal church. But I eventually realized I was wrong, because one of the speakers introduced RICKY SKAGGS, and the hippie got up on stage with his Martin guitar. Ricky’s curly red hair and his famous moustache are long gone!

I felt like grabbing him and telling him the story of the MP3 player and the missing disks, but I didn’t want to be tased and waterboarded so early in the day.

I’m pooped. More later.

My House Needs Fiber

I had a moment of clarity last night, unfortunately. It can be very relaxing to be wrong and not know it, so it’s always upsetting when I get an epiphany.

I had the TV on because one of the birds was out of the cage, and I happened to see a show called “Hoarders.” It’s about people who fill their houses with junk, until the rats take over and the kids have to sleep on piles of boxes.

The show bugged me. I’m not a true hoarder, but I’m related to one, and I have lots of hobbies, and I’m absent-minded. Put it all together, and you end up with a person with lots of junk, who puts stuff down in the wrong places and forgets it’s there for weeks or months. Hoarding Lite.

I got up and started relocating things. I had a pile of books and gun parts by my bed. I made room in a closet and stored it. I took tool-related items off the dining room table and put them in the garage. I threw out a number of stupid and worthless items.

Of course, I will need all of those items very badly today. That’s how decluttering works. As soon as the garbage truck drives away, you need whatever is in it.

I hate clutter. It’s like living in a little dirty crevice. It probably raises your blood pressure. But I have a clutter-prone personality. It’s like Felix and Oscar are in my head, duking it out like Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

I have a feeling that the Holy Spirit reduces clutter. Hear me out. When you’re not living for God, you do stupid things with your time and money. You will wander down fruitless paths, involving yourself in futile pursuits. That’s because only God can guide you in the direction you’re supposed to take. Result? You end up with stuff you weren’t supposed to have. Not just stuff, but time obligations. For example, you may give up church because your talented kid has sports practice every day, or simply because you want to squander time watching football on TV. You might end up devoting three hours a night to drinking beer. You may find yourself at a strip bar three times a week, blowing your money.

When God takes over, your priorities and desires change with time. Suddenly, you don’t need an entire closet for your porn collection. Or, like me, you may want to get rid of your delicious Cuban cigars. You find yourself selling things and giving things away. Life becomes more streamlined. You start discarding the things Paul referred to as “dung” so you can make room for the pearl of great price.

I still have a rolling toolbox full of gun stuff by the dining table, and a lot of my canning supplies are sitting on it. I have to move that to the garage. I have to throw out or give away some of the garage objects I will never need. I think it’s safe to throw out my old PC cabinet, and I need to Craigslist my brewing kegs.

I really need to get rid of the Super Genie Lift I inherited from one of my dad’s tenants. A guy at my church said they’ll take it, but it may be ten years before they get around to coming for it.

One of the reasons I don’t like Miami is that there is no space here. I’d like to have a home with an outbuilding for my hobbies. Here, that would run maybe three million dollars. A hundred miles north, maybe two hundred and fifty thousand. Cities are for limited people. If your only hobbies are TV and clubbing, Miami is perfect for you. Add three hobbies, and you’re out of luck. You need to move and get more room.

Last night I thought about my grandfather’s house in Kentucky. It had five bedrooms, including a little spare bedroom that held some of his guns and my grandmother’s sewing stuff. It had a big kitchen, a full dining room, a full living room, a big den, a second den in the basement, a second kitchen in the basement, tons of extra basement square footage, a big foyer, and three baths. It also had a tool shed and a barn, plus a carport and a concrete patio.

Mind you, this was not a mansion. It was just a nice red brick home. It brought $120,000 when the heirs sold it.

THAT is living. Bring your tools. Bring your cooking equipment. Buy three smokers. Get four gun safes. Get a bass boat and an RV and five motorcycles. No problem!

My idea of an ideal home is a three-bedroom CBS house with a big commercial-style kitchen, terrazzo floors, and no curtains, with nothing on the walls except maybe NRA calendars. Put a 1500-square-foot building out back with lots of room for musical instruments, tools, and storage. Give me two acres or more to grow food. I’m done. Let me live there until I die. You would have to hold me at gunpoint to get me to leave that house to go to paradise.

Forget antiques. Forget rugs; they hold dirt and stains and smells. Forget hardwood. It rots, termites eat it, and it makes noise. Put a drain in the kitchen floor so I can spill things. Tile the kitchen walls all the way to the ceiling. Get me white dishes and cups from a restaurant supply house, and put in a deck oven for pizza. Kill every plant that isn’t grass or something that produces food. Give me an entire room for Maynard and Marvin. That’s luxury!

The “stronghold” concept is well known among Christians. Satan has spiritual strongholds we have to conquer. The Canaanite cities Joshua destroyed are symbolic of these strongholds. Addictions and bad habits are strongholds. Bad attitudes are strongholds. A physical illness or poverty may be a stronghold. We’re supposed to break these things down by spiritual warfare.

It has occurred to me that God has strongholds, too. Every human believer is described as a house or a temple or an embassy. We belong to the nation of heaven, even though we live on earth. Within us–within our “walls”–God’s ways prevail. And we have to strive to keep Satan out, and we pray in the Spirit to build ourselves up, so there is something stronger than Satan within us, to repel attackers.

Similarly, a Christian’s home can be a stronghold. It can be an embassy of God. That’s what I want. I know life isn’t supposed to be a breeze, but we’re supposed to live in victory, and it seems to me that within our homes, Satan should be relatively powerless. A stronghold home should be a place where a Christian can retreat and recharge. We have to fight the enemy everywhere else. At home, we should have more peace.

A home should be like a military garrison. You defend it and keep it free from invaders, and from time to time, you make excursions into enemy territory and do damage. Then you retreat back to the garrison and prepare for your next assault.

This is what I want. I don’t want fancy furniture or snooty neighbors or a location shallow people would crave. I want a fortress where I can find a little relief.

Before the clutter show, I say a show called American Pickers, about two guys who go around talking old people into selling them valuable antiques below the market price. They went to visit a man who had twelve buildings full of junk. They had a hard time persuading him to sell them anything. He had to be 75 years old, and this stuff was falling apart, but time after time, they would show him a rusty object and ask the price, and he would tell them it wasn’t for sale. It seemed to me that this guy was in the same boat as the hoarders. He’s going to die, and all that neglected, decaying stuff will be loaded up in dumptrucks and destroyed so the new owners will be able to use the buildings. Crazy.

I also caught a few minutes of a show called Intervention. You can probably guess what that’s about. I plan to record it from now own. It’s helpful to see how tough professional addiction counselors are. It reminded me of an important truth: if you don’t fix a loved one who has an addiction–if you withdraw and wait for them to change, and it doesn’t happen–it doesn’t mean you didn’t try to help. It means the addict didn’t try. Every bad thing that happens to an addict as the result of not trying is the addict’s fault. If someone asks you why you’re not helping, say, “Shouldn’t you be asking why the addict isn’t trying?” Don’t fall for blame-shifting. If you accept even the smallest particle of blame, you might as well be handing the addict a bottle of pills.

It’s funny how I happened to tune in to three very instructive shows, on a night when I was just trying to find entertainment while I communed with my pets. Dang these “coincidences.” They are swarming on me.

Stand Back

What an exciting moment for the arts. Today I got out my cornet and played a Mozart piece.

It was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

I Googled, anticipating the wise-guy commenters. No, Mozart didn’t actually write it. Be a buzzkill, why don’t you.

The trumpet book was full of stuff I couldn’t stand to play, including “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” “Hot Cross Buns,” and “Jingle Bells,” so out of desperation, I learned how to play an A, and I skipped to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” It worked. I played it unbelievably badly, but then I played the easier songs badly, too, so it wasn’t a problem.

Then I got cocky. I took out my book of standards and looked for something with very few notes in it. I landed on “The Girl From Ipanema.”

Five minutes later, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” wasn’t looking so bad any more. I can sight-read dotted notes and eighth notes OR I can have an embouchure. I can’t do both at once.

I think once I can play a few more notes, I can actually make some music. Badly. That will be fun.

I don’t know much about the trumpet (cornet, whatever), but from my sheet music, it looks like just about every well-known song is published in a range I can’t reach. My exciting high note is an A, and to play anything at all, you have to be able to get up to the F above it.

Someone pointed out that trumpet music is written incorrectly. I should have seen this coming. Music can never be simple. I wondered why my cornet’s G was really an F or F-sharp. I thought the piano was out of tune, but then I noticed that my cheap electronic keyboard was also “out of tune.”

Are all instruments like this? If so, I am even more amazed by Franz Liszt than I used to be. He could play an orchestral score on the piano at sight, while making comments about it. That would be a good trick even if it were written for piano. Now I have to wonder if orchestral scores are written in weird ways, like trumpet music. He would have to know all that, transpose the whole mess in his head, turn it into piano music, and talk about the music, all at once. I think.

What exactly IS an orchestral score? If you have like 75 instruments, how can you have one score?

Don’t tell me. Forget I asked.

I oiled my valves. That was a thrill. Inside, they look like they’re new. Freaky. This horn was probably made in 1961. Somebody didn’t like to practice. That’s my guess.

“Aunt Rhody” probably got him.

I Need an Agent

I played a song on the cornet today!

As predicted by a reader, it was the bane of all beginning music students: “Hot Cross Buns.” I honestly think I’d rather listen to “My Sharona.”

I was atrocious, but I played the notes.

Onward and upward.

I’m surprised I didn’t realize what a great instrument the trumpet (cornet, whatever) could be. Most of the trumpet music I’ve heard has been jazz, and the artists don’t really knock themselves out shooting for feeling and finesse. It’s mostly speed, high notes, and musical legerdemain. I’ve been listening to clips of other types of horn music online, and it’s extremely impressive stuff.

Which is ironic, really, because the main thing jazz players try to do is impress.

Epoxy = Talent?

I am starting to suspect that the embouchure drives a lot of horn players insane.

Today I started trying to play my favorite song, D-E-F-G-F-E-D (look for it on Sony Records soon), and I made a strange and disappointing fuzzy sound. I decided to do what I always do when I have a problem. I Googled.

I found a site with some good stuff on it. A guy named John Lynch makes a product called the Asymmetric Mouthpiece, and his promotional site features some material applicable to all horn players. He says you shouldn’t situate your mouthpiece so half of it is on each lip. Instead, move it so 2/3 of it is on the bottom lip.

I gave this a shot, and it really seems to help. I’m not sure why everyone else says to do it the other way. Presumably, they’re not stupid.

His mouthpiece has a thicker bottom rim on it. He says this will extend your upper range by up to seven semitones. But he doesn’t make cornet mouthpieces, and he advises cornet players to simulate the effect with plumber’s putty.

The obvious problem here is that anyone who can stand the feeling of plumber’s putty against their lips can save the $73 cost of a mouthpiece.

A horn player named Nick Drozdoff has a Youtube in which he shows a cornet mouthpiece with a glob of putty in it. He didn’t like it, so he ended up buying a Harrison Wedge cornet mouthpiece. My guess: he never heard of Devcon, JB Weld, or Marine-Tex. Any of those products should be much more satisfactory.

I may get another mouthpiece and glom some Devcon onto it. What the hell.

I Miss the Old Ones

I am working on the cornet. Man, it’s weird. Every day, I feel like I woke up with a different set of lips.

Day before yesterday, I could barely play a note. Yesterday it got way easier. Today I’m struggling again. It’s as if the embouchure is developing so fast, it changes significantly every night.

I had to take a break. This is one of those days when I have to remind myself I’m practicing for the future, not the present.

Don MacLean Got the Year Wrong

I watched the tenth DVD of the ten-disk series Jazz last night. What a relief. It’s over.

I noticed something as I made my way through the documentary. It starts out enjoyable and then turns into a big drag. Why? Bebop.

At the beginning of the series, they talked about African roots and Haitian music. That stuff may be a lot of hogwash, depending on whom you listen to, but it’s interesting. Then they moved on to New Orleans and the first real jazz. Then we learned about Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke and the other early greats.

After that, the series moved on to swing, which is wonderful music. Chick Webb. Benny Goodman. Artie Shaw.

Eventually, the program made a turn. I believe it happened when they brought up Coleman Hawkins and a seminal recording he made. “Body and Soul,” I think. He abandoned the melody and went off on his own path. If Ken Burns is to be believed, this is pretty much where bebop started. First thing you know, you’re watching Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the music just…plain…STINKS.

I was thinking about it last night. Rock and roll is not the reason jazz died. That’s a whiny excuse. Jazz died because it became unpleasant to listen to. The musicians no longer thought about the fundamental purpose music has always served, which is to please the ear while conveying enjoyable emotional content. They only thought about cleverness. Invert a chord. Mess with the timing. Shun harmony in favor of constant dissonance. Eventually, they ended up playing music that sounded GREY. It’s like a grey wall splattered with random blotches and splashes of grey paint. A paint blob may be light grey, or it might be charcoal grey, but in the end, it’s all still grey. Nobody wants to hear that stuff.

There’s a reason musicians have always used dissonance sparingly. It’s tedious, oppressive, and melancholy. It is the sound of despair. It’s fine to toss in a few flatted notes here and there, like seasoning, but when the whole tune is dissonant, it’s like a pot of stew with a pound of cumin in it. It’s too much. The music no longer conveys things like optimism, high spirits, nostalgia, or love. It conveys pessimism and alienation. If I want pessimism and alienation, I’ll watch Andy Dick and read The Catcher in the Rye. I don’t need to torture my ears with it.

Notes are like color. What happens when you take paint in the seven colors of the spectrum and stir them together? GREY, with a little brown.

Jazz musicians seem to think the heart of music is progress. It’s not. Emotion and beauty are at the heart. It’s okay to play the way musicians did sixty or seventy years ago. There is nothing wrong with playing the way Benny Goodman did, or the way Bix Beiderbecke did. The fact that they got there first doesn’t make your contribution invalid. Combinatorics is such that there is a virtually infinite number of ways to play any song. Even “Jingle Bells.” You will never run out of ways to express yourself. You don’t have to turn the music inside-out in order to be somebody. Chopin said he never played any of his pieces the same way twice.

Classical musicians still play Chopin and Scarlatti and Mozart. Thank God. What if they decided Chopin’s waltzes were no longer fit to be heard, because the ideas were a hundred and seventy years old? What stupidity that would be. Modern pianists still do beautiful, unique things with this music. Listen to Richter, and then listen to Rubinstein. Different, but equally valuable. On the other hand, modern classical music, which is infected by the progress bug, is an abomination. It’s like sitting in a room in a dreadful De Stijl building, with the walls plastered with Jackson Pollack paintings. The point isn’t to enjoy it. The point is to be seen claiming you enjoy it. And smoking French cigarettes, if at all possible.

And the things the jazz “scientists” did…are they really that impressive? Is emphasizing a different beat rocket science? Should you get a Nobel Prize for starting measures with dissonant notes and making them resolve? It’s not string theory, believe me. It may be creative, but it’s not the discovery of relativity. It’s impressive that people can do these things on the fly, but so what? If the end result is unlistenable for a reasonably sophisticated audience, you might as well be playing silently, in your head.

I could make pizza with jakfruit sauce and limburger cheese if I wanted. I could use flour made from dried yuca. It would be highly original. Would you want to eat it? Would you wake up in the morning and think, “Man, I have to have some of that jakfruit pizza today”? Jazz musicians think too much about ingredients and not enough about the dish.

The funny thing is, the thing that killed jazz was not, itself, creative. Coming up with new musical ideas was creative. Forcing people to adopt those ideas and making them choose musical pigeonholes was the opposite of creative. No musician should think he has to do what the people around him are doing. That is one hundred and eighty degrees away from the fundamental concepts of art and creativity.

I’ll bet musicians who insisted on respecting melody and chord changes were ostracized back in the bop days. My knowledge of human nature says it must have been so. Everybody wants to be original, just like everybody else, because if you’re not the right kind of nonconformist, you’re never going to fit in. That idea is as old as the world.

Jazz people love to say the Beatles killed jazz by competing with inferior music that was easier to listen to. The Beatles didn’t kill jazz. They showed up after it was dead. There was a giant hole in our popular music. It had to be filled. Besides, other musicians had been jumping into that hole for a decade or so. The Beatles did not invent rock and roll. It was the predominant popular music in America, years before they arrived. Jazz musicians who whine about the Beatles need to be made aware of names like “Buddy Holly” and “Elvis Presley.”

If jazz musicians were currently playing music as enjoyable as Benny Goodman’s, they’d do just fine. Look at Diana Krall and Harry Connick. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to call themselves scientists, and they wouldn’t hit the trashy heights of the true giants of rap and bad dance music, but they would make a good living. Instead, they want progress. They can have it. I’d trade a thousand Keith Jarretts for one Nat Cole. I’d trade them for almost anything, just to make their music go away.

I can listen to Miles Davis, and I like some of John Coltrane’s stuff, but that’s about as far as I can stand to go. I bought two albums featuring Charlie Parker, and they’re downright obnoxious. No wonder he was depressed. “It’s brilliant.” Great. Come get it. I’ll leave it by the front door. Call me a hick. That’s fine, but remember, critics used to go wild over the stuff I listen to. I guess they were wrong.

When you come right down to it, no matter how rarely you watch the Food Channel, and no matter how little your pans cost, and no matter how unfamiliar you are with the latest foodie jargon, you will be a good cook as long as you can make a nice biscuit. A good biscuit is better than bad pheasant under glass, and very few people can make one.

The same principle applies to music. Because the musicians didn’t get that, clever jazz had no chance of survival as a popular art form.

Your Choice

Here, look at Artie Shaw and Charlie Parker. Which would you rather listen to for two hours?

By the way, Parker’s song is about his heroin dealer.

More

Interesting quotation from Miles, the autobiography of Miles Davis:

Birth of the Cool became a collector’s item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy’s music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren’t a fast listener, you couldn’t catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn’t sweet, and it didn’t have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss. Bebop didn’t have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn’t even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging–but they weren’t sweet. But Birth of the Cool was different because you could hear everything and hum it also.

Improvement!

Wow, this is freaky. I started using my trumpet sheet music for piano sight-reading. It’s fantastic. Now I can sort of almost play songs at sight. Granted, one hand is missing, but that’s not the point. The point is that I finally have something simple enough to use for sight-reading, without having to play the same ten things over and over. The left-hand stuff will still be a pain, but half a solution is way better than none, and progress with the right hand will help to some degree with the left hand.

Apart from that, the music is better. It beats dismal pieces by obscure classical composers, about depressed puppets.

For anyone trying to learn to sight-read on the piano, I recommend this highly.

Slobbery Instrument Starts Making Sense

The cornet is working out well.

Until today, I couldn’t make myself practice for more than 15 minutes. On the first day, I was seeing spots and feeling like I would faint, and the sounds were positively flatulent. And all I had was the mouthpiece. On the second or third day, I managed to play a G. Yesterday I managed to play “G F E” over and over. Today, I managed D, and I also started to get a sound that almost resembled a brass instrument. On top of that, I was able to practice continuously for several minutes without stopping, and I didn’t faint. And I went over half an hour total. My lip crapped out at that point, so I sat down.

I got myself a book of standards. Man, is it encouraging. One note at a time! I can’t WAIT to be able to play an entire scale so I can try this. It’s so much simpler than the piano, and presumably, sight-reading with the trumpet will help me do a better job of sight-reading on the keyboard.

People say the trumpet (cornet, whatever) is hard to play. Okay, it is. Every instrument is hard to play…WELL. But some instruments are easy to play badly, and it looks like the trumpet is one of them. If I can learn to play badly in a month, it will be fantastic. I don’t have to be Doc Severinsen to get a lot out of it.

It takes about six months to learn to play bluegrass guitar badly, because flatpicking is a set of very unnatural motions. It takes a long time to learn to play piano badly, because sight-reading is hard, and you have to play two parts at once. Trumpet seems more like the banjo. The basic mechanics aren’t that tough.

I don’t know how long it takes to get an embouchure working. At the rate I’m going, it would appear that I ought to be able to play a whole scale within a month. Once that happens, I may be able to torture the neighbors with a real song. I mean actual music. Not the horrors found in my “Play Trumpet Today” book. On March 1st, I may be playing a whole song badly! I sure hope so.

After that, road trip to Birdland. I’ll need a beret.

If I can learn to play something really engrossing, like Summertime, it will be hard to pry the horn out of my hand. That’s a slow song, loaded with improvisational inspiration. The notes will be in my head, and if I think there is any hope I can actually play them, I’ll keep trying until I have to be separated from the horn by burly EMTs and sheriff’s deputies with bean bag guns.

I don’t know all of the instruments that are easy to play badly, but offhand, I can recommend the electric bass. I played one the first and only time I picked it up. Bass players hate to hear people say things like that, but it’s true. The bass is really easy. All you have to do is find three or four notes per measure that harmonize with whatever you’re listening to, and then you play them over and over. Nobody is going to give you a scholarship to Juilliard for doing that, but it will be real music. And the sad reality is, if you’re playing rock, you could actually sit in with a band after a day, because listeners have extremely low expectations of bass players. If you’re good enough to solo, people will notice you, but if you can only play your three or four notes, 98% of the crowd will have no idea you can’t actually play. Here’s something to make bass players even madder: for most rock songs, the bass player could turn off his amp, and most people in the audience wouldn’t know the difference.

Drums. You can play the drums right now, as long as you don’t get cocky.

I hear horror stories about the violin, although I haven’t tried it. They say the hardest part is being able to stand listening to yourself while you get the pitches wrong a billion times. People say you pretty much have to start learning the bagpipes as an embryo, because it takes so long to learn the fingering and wind control. Of course, the bagpipes are, in all respects, heinous. So I can’t say I care. Now the Uillean pipes…they would be worth the effort.

The cornet is a mystery. I thought the notes the horn could play were determined solely by the pitch the lips make, plus the length of the tube. But I noticed something odd today. When I do the fingering for a certain note, but I try to play a different note (because I’m inept), sometimes it seems like I accidentally make the horn play the correct note. How can that be possible? I would think the horn’s length and the wavelengths of the sounds would relate in a pretty rigid way.

I just found a website that explains how horns work. I can’t believe I used to be an aspiring physicist. Just looking at this stuff gives me vertigo.

I remember studying forced oscillations. You can make anything oscillate at the frequency of your choice, if you’re willing to supply the energy. I don’t know if horns work that way. You would think the volume would plummet.

Anyway, this is pretty cool. It won’t be long until I’m jamming to smokin’ beats like Three Blind Mice and Frere Jacques.

Joseph was Better at This

I had the funniest dream this morning, not long before I got up.

I was in an old house that had been converted into a school. A little girl was in a room on the second floor. She was a demon-worshiper. She believed it was possible to be a Christian and worship other “gods” and benefit from all of it.

She was giving a presentation to her class, about the ways she worshiped this “god” and that one. She had colorful costumes, and she wore a different one for each demon. Each one required different rituals, and she demonstrated them, throwing things into bowls and so on.

Her teacher and I were downstairs, and we were pretty disturbed. We noticed that the ceiling was bulging down toward us, from the classroom above. Something extremely heavy was in that room. The pressure of its weight made a circular bulge in the ceiling. It was some sort of spirit, sitting in the room among the kids. They couldn’t see it.

We went up the stairs to help this girl. A black man was with us. I guess he worked with the teacher. We were going to make this kid understand that you can’t be a Christian AND a demon-worshiper. If you have even one other god, you’re not a Christian. Or you’re a Christian, but you’re going to have terrible problems.

When we got in the room, everyone was gone except the girl. She was dressed normally. She was unconscious, but she was standing in a far corner, facing the wall.

While we were there, food was served. It was chicken that had been fried in breading and then covered with sauce. There was rice under it. Someone asked me how it was, and I said it was okay, but the rice was a little overcooked.

When I woke up, I tried to figure out whether this dream meant anything. I prayed for an answer. I have never had a dream that turned out to be a message from God, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Here is what I came up with. The room is Haiti. The girl represents Haitians who worship demons yet think they’re also Catholic or other types of Christians. The problem with the ceiling is a problem with the rock under the island. It’s the reason they have earthquakes. The presence of the demons–their spiritual “weight”–causes it.

People who go to Haiti to provide spiritual guidance will have their physical needs met in abundance. That’s the food. There was nothing in the dream that I could apply to humanitarian aid.

Is this right? I can’t even guess. Maybe I just dreamed about a confused little girl.

The teacher was attractive. I don’t know her in real life. I don’t know the black man. He didn’t seem like a Haitian, although many Haitian-Americans have no accent.

I can only recall one instance of a dream that had application to the future. My friend Ivette gave me a Cohiba Esplendido, from Cuba. That part had already happened, for real. In the dream, I smoked it, and it had a wonderful flavor like cloves. Later, when I smoked the actual cigar, it had that same flavor, only with much less intensity. That was extremely odd. I had never had a cigar that tasted anything like cloves, but some Cubans have that flavor.

That was a pretty stupid dream, I admit. But it came true. And it’s all I have to offer.

My cornet arrived last night. It’s incredible. It’s a professional-quality horn, and it’s essentially new, even though it was made the year I was born. It has had a couple of minor dents repaired, and the seller thought they probably came from being bounced around in the case, but that’s it. Other than that, there isn’t a scratch on it. You could put this thing in a store and claim it was made last month, and no one would know the difference.

It’s too bad pianos aren’t like brass instruments. You can pick up the brass equivalent of a nearly new Steinway for under $500, because so many people buy horns and quit using them almost immediately. I paid $150. I’m sure this thing would cost at least a grand, new.

Now, if only I could play it.

I have practiced my embouchure for two days. I can go about fifteen minutes without fainting or losing my mind. I figure that’s enough. When you’re working a muscle and building a callus, it does no good to overdo it. That’s what I tell myself, because fifteen minutes are all I can stand at this point. I can make the mouthpiece do a few things, but the horn sounds like a cow with the scours.

My dad says I ought to be able to make a sound that isn’t horrifying within a week or so.

That’s all I have for now. I’m just enjoying my coffee and relaxing.

Musical Stuff Dribbles In

My cornet mouthpiece arrived last night. I started making heinous noises with it almost immediately.

My dad advised me to get the mouthpiece before the horn, and I did so, but only by a day. He says there is no point in touching the horn until I get my embouchure working on the mouthpiece.

How many people here think I’ll be able to leave the horn in the case that long?

Right. That’s what I figured.

I have a Hal Leonard trumpet DVD. The guy in the video says that in order to play the trumpet, you have to smile and pucker at the same time.

Try this. Seriously. It can’t be done. I’m not even sure what it means. Puckering moves the lips out. Smiling pulls them back. In my universe, back is not out.

I know he’s right. Whatever he’s trying to say. But I’m not sure he’s saying what he wants to.

I got my dad to help me out with the mouthpiece. He said I did fine. I thought I sounded like a boiler accident. And I nearly fainted. How are you supposed to stay concious while you’re blowing air as hard as you can? No wonder Gillespie was Dizzy.

My dad reluctantly informed me that he had been wrong about spitting in the valves. He says he learned that these days, the oil they make for valves actually works. Much better than the tar and molasses mixture they sold back in his day, I guess. I have two kinds of oil: Alysin and Five Starr. I’ll let him use it, if he promises not to get spit in it.

I watched Jazz again last night. It’s getting up to the Gillespie/Parker era now, or as I like to call it, “The Death of Fun Jazz.” Before these guys came along, it was possible for a person without a Ph.D. to enjoy listening to jazz. Afterward, not so much. As plummeting concert attendance and record sales show. Go on Youtube and find a video of Gillespie singing “Salt Peanuts,” if you want to see why jazz died.

It may be the most fulfilling thing an intelligent musician can possibly play, but who can listen to it? It reminds me of bluegrass. I loved playing it, but I couldn’t make myself listen to other people playing it.

I found a Salt Peanuts Youtube. Don’t click on it. I warned you.

It’s so bad, I’d rather listen to Edie Brickell.

I guess Gillespie was on cloud nine while they played that. Go figure. It reminds me of the Albert Brooks movie, Defending Your Life. He was represented at his heavenly trial by Rip Torn, a being so smart ordinary humans couldn’t understand him. When he missed a day of court, he told Brooks his excuse: “I was trapped near the intercircle of fault.”

They probably play Salt Peanuts there.

My trumpet book features the much-beloved hit “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie.” Can’t hardly wait to learn that. I remember hearing it in my childhood, when my aunt and my sister used to bang on my grandmother’s Acrosonic spinet. The big hits were Aunt Rhodie and Shortenin’ Bread. Somehow they never got picked up by a label.

Hope this works out. If not, shiny wall decoration.

Play it, Don’t Spray It

I should be doing something, but I’m procrastinating. Procrastination is the one thing I never put off. I guess you saw that joke coming. Someone probably saw it coming in 500 B.C.

I’m reading about trumpets. I just bought a cornet, but the word “trumpet” is easier to find on Google, so that’s what I’m reading about.

I think it’s remarkable that you can get a $2,000 trumpet for $200. People must abandon the trumpet in droves, for the used market to be like this. If trumpets were pianos, I’d have two Steinway D’s; one from New York, and one from Hamburg. I’d get a third and hollow it out for a novelty liquor cabinet.

The cornet I got is a Buescher Aristocrat. It was made in about 1961, and it’s in new condition, except for a couple of repaired dents. It’s functioning right.

A few years after it was made, the company was taken over by Selmer, and the Aristocrat name was applied to a crummy horn for kids. When mine was made, it was a professional-quality horn, although not a particularly great one. I paid what most people pay for good used student horns, and it wasn’t hard to find. If I sell it, I should be able to get at least what I paid. But not much more. Because used cornets are cheap.

I figure what I got is about like a Yamaha grand piano. More than good enough, but nothing special.

There are two things about wind instruments that turn me off. One is excess volume. The other is spit. I just don’t like spit. I never have. I don’t let people drink out of my glass (except Marv and Maynard). I don’t take bites out of other people’s apples. If you’re going to do that, you might as well French-kiss them. Anything they’ve got, you’re swallowing. Mucus, germs, pus, bits of decaying food, whatever. I don’t even like to hold papers after somebody licks his finger to turn the pages.

I guess I can learn to tolerate a certain amount of spit, as long as it’s not someone else’s.

My dad says my horn is for losers. He has a Bach. What a snob. I suspect the Buescher is good enough for someone who hasn’t even figured out how to make an embouchure.

Learning the word “embouchure” brought me pleasure, because I’ve been hearing it all my life, and I never knew how it was spelled. People mumble it, and I think they do it on purpose, because they don’t speak French. It sounds like “armature” and “umbrature” and “omature.” It’s actually om-boo-SURE, with the emphasis on the last syllable. How do I know that? Six years of French. And the French love accenting the last syllables of words. It’s what whiners do, in all languages, and the French are no slackers in this regard. They have turned whining into a fixed feature of their native tongue.

Judging from the structure of the word, the literal meaning is something like “in-your-mouth-ment.” Which makes sense.

My dad says I have to spit in the horn’s valves. Oh, man! No way! I can’t stand playing an instrument that always reeks of dried spit. I got some fancy valve oil. He says valve oil doesn’t work, but they may have changed the formula since he learned to play, back during the reign of Thutmose III, the Musical Pharaoh.

I had to fork out big-time for a mouthpiece. You can’t get one in Miami, unless you want one from Home Depot, made from galvanized steel. I exaggerate, but I couldn’t find one that was made by a reputable company. I paid for two-day shipping so I can have the mouthpiece two days before the horn. I want to get a head start on the embouchure, and it’s worth ten extra bucks to me to get two days. The mouthpiece wasn’t expensive, but when you add in the extra shipping, I got dinged.

I’m going to have nightmares about drowning in spit. I just know it. If I were interviewed by James Lipton, and he asked me my least favorite word, it would be “saliva.” I cringe, typing it.

I have to find something else to do while I’m procrastinating. I would write some more, but I’m having a hard time rationalizing it. I hate when that happens.

Horn

I get crazier every day.

I’ve been watching my Jazz DVDs all week, and I’ve been encouraging my dad to pick up the trumpet again. And while this was on my mind, I thought about the horn and woodwind players in the documentary. These guys play one note at a time. ONE. No chords. No sustain pedals. No supporting one hand with the other. I keep thinking that has to give them a lot of freedom, compared to a pianist, and it has to make sight-reading easier to pick up.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I am going to take a whack at the cornet.

My dad can give me a lot of help. He knows how to play several horns. He says real men play the trumpet, not the cornet, but Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong played the cornet, so I want to see what it’s like.

Maybe it will be a stupid idea, but finding out will be cheap. It’s amazing how cheap used horns are. You can get a professional-quality cornet for two hundred bucks, if you don’t care how it looks. The worst professional-quality grand piano on earth will run you ten grand, and that would be a good buy.

One nice thing about a used cornet is that even if I hate it, I can get rid of it without getting dinged.

We’ll see what happens.

I Have my Brass

I am a bad person. I am an instigator.

My dad used to play the trumpet and some other horns, and he loves music. But he quit playing, because it’s so loud. You almost have to live on an island to practice the trumpet without annoying people.

I saw Wynton Marsalis in the documentary, Jazz, commenting while occasionally playing a horn. I realized his playing wasn’t loud, and knowing nothing about horns, I figured he had to have a special instrument that played quietly. Apparently, there is no such thing. But I found a weird electronic mute made by Yamaha, which supposedly allows horn players to practice quietly without the back pressure problems a regular mute causes.

I emailed the information to my dad, and now he’s fooling around with his cornet. I may have succeeded in tempting him.

This has to be better for him than watching the tube.