Beautiful Music
In another life I was a piano teacher. I had quit the piano at age ten, like most kids, in a fit of impatience with my elderly teacher and a disinterest in practicing. I didn’t want to play the songs from my grandparent’s childhood found in John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano (circa 1936), I wanted to play the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique. I wanted to play beautiful music. After a few years of piano-free existence, at thirteen, using the knowledge I’d accumulated from all those years of lessons, I taught myself Für Elise. It took about a year of unsteady practice, and after mastering that I moved…
The Local Record Store
I live in a pretty eclectic area. There’s an abundance of Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian restaurants; used clothing stores litter the boulevard; a patchwork of people cruise the streets at all hours. Mike and I take Rusty on frequent walks through the neighborhood, enjoying the snug craftsman houses and lush yards packed with native plants, as well as the colorful rush of humanity. A few weeks back, we first discovered the record store. A tiny closet of an establishment, it sells used music from the ages before iPods and streaming. The scruffy proprietor agreed Rusty could accompany us into the shabby looking store, and we split to divide and conquer. The…
