Music and Musing
Y’see, the problem about staying away from Facebook is: I don’t have a place to put my random thoughts about things. I miss that. Today, I am sitting, thinking, superficially drinking a cup of tea and musing about playing music. How nice it would be if someone tied some tech to the keyboards of an organ. If you could see your toe, heading for a pedal…wow. That would make the learning so much faster. If the music were somewhat animated on the sheet, for a more interactive reading? Wow. For example, if a convenient fingering showed up as you played, a bar ahead perhaps, or the chord was identified above or even on the staff? Wow. Learning and putting it all together would be much faster. Still have to learn, still have to practice but the connections would be so much faster.
I could invent this very thing, I suppose but that would mean learning a whole lot of stuff I have no interest in any more. At the very least, I believe I have no interest. The truth is, I do have the interest but don’t feel that there is time enough left in living to be doing more stuff. Time. There is not time to make a thing faster anymore. At 72, the 10 years it takes to learn most stuff is something I may or may not have. Isn’t there something else more important to gain from the 10 years than an ability? A thing there would be no time to use? My remaining years might better be spent just living, connecting with folks, eating dinner, sleeping comfortably, cleaning up. That is life. The stuff and nonsense part is for the young. It is up to them to invent, change, experiment. After a while, it behooves to just live —- the way a pussycat does.
Or not. Maybe, the just living part I speak of IS the wasting of time by inventing airplanes and automobiles and telephones and organ pedal monitors. It could be that the way a human being ‘just lives’ is to move from one ‘invention’ to another in our quest to re-shape the world. It is illusion that the cow and the pussycat have reached peace, stability? They only eat, drink, reproduce and rest comfortably. They play, yes. They feel, yes. They do the things humans do but they are satisfied? No need to develop language, they can communicate. It’s good enough. The cows of a millenium ago communicated the same way. Good enough. Cow and/or pussycat Nirvana. For humans, our Nirvana is not a present thing, ever? Our state of being at peace is or can be almost alien. It is a goal for some, some reach it. Swami Watchamacallim, he did. The most of us always find dissatisfaction with something and make goals of changing, attaining, moving. The damn living room should be blue, not taupe. Let’s get to it.
Robert On The Air 