Three gold stars

I bought myself a present for my birthday; a chromatic harmonica. Now this is not your usual chromatic harmonica it's a custom tuned (G diminished, if there are any musicos reading along) number made by a little company located what was formerly Eastern Germany.

The whole process of getting this beauty was a lovely experience (more on this later) but todays topic is a few thoughts on learning and accomplishments. OK let it be known that I have an aptitude for music. I can pretty much make a passable noise on a bunch of instruments. But with this aptitude comes laziness which has hindered my ability to move to a higher level of skill. Translation: I can fake it, so why bother with all the tedious stuff? I've been playing piano since I was 4 years old but if even you put a gun to my head I still couldn't play a scale the "correct" way.

I've been playing harmonicas off and on since my debut with Dave Johnson and Devan Garlock in the Fremont Jr. High talent show. I played the french horn (?) line on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer." It was the beginning of my short but sweet academic "popularity phase" where at lunch time I actually got to sit at the same table as the groovy kids. Anyway, I kind of get harmonicas and can do (fake) some pretty mean "Chicago" blues riffs on the diatonic (OK jargon watch, a diatonic is the short one favored by cowboys, sharecroppers and burley black guys in sharp suites). The chromatic is another instrument all together. It has all 12 notes available (the diatonic, "officially" only has 7). Fewer people play the chromatic and as such there really are only a handful of relatively famous players. Toots Thielman is probably the most well known but Stevie Wonder started his career (when he was known as "Little Stevie Wonder") spicing up his lovely tunes with a chromatic.

Anyway I made a promise to myself to not to just dink around with this new intrument. I want to learn it properly; starting with the basics and then moving into tunes and then improvisation.

Allow me to bore you for a bit. The diminished tuned chromatic is a pretty novel harmonica. You can play all 12 keys by learning just three simple patterns. Compare this to a normal chromatic where playing 12 keys require you learn 12 patterns (some of which are pretty nasty) and you can see it's advantages.

So I gave myself a goal; one pattern in one week of 1/2 hour sessions. Well I was too generous with needed time, basically it took me an hour per pattern to more or less "get it."

By learning the patterns I felt as though I had really accomplished something with a small but well directed amount of effort. I then decided to reward my self by learning a tune. I've always wanted to play John Coltrane's beautiful ballad "Niama." You know what? On the "dimi" chromatic I had it picked out in half an hour! So reward rewarded it' back to the wood shed; task: play the patterns descending. Once that is acomplished the next reward is learning Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." Another slow wonderful ballad that I've been dying to play for years.

It seems that just about everything in life is so intangible. What are we successful at? Being a parent? Our work? Friendships? Relationships? So much effort is put into day to day life and to be honest the rewards are often pretty hard to percieve. Money. Affection. Acknowledgement. Acceptance. Other than dinero these are all so vague. I've always wished there was somebody out there to put a gold stars on the top of the notebook paper of my life. I guess it's up to me to put those stars on. Getting this instrument maybe the best thing I've done for myself in years. Three gold stars for Robin. "Good Job! Keep it up!"

Spaghetti a la Hobo

Last night I got creative with the left overs. OK some of them were pretty high end, particularly the Jamon, but still it was a bold session of winging it.

First I chopped up a sad half an onion. Then the aforementioned ham. Hey, I've fallen in love with using scissors in the kitchen, it made quick work of an aging but still tasty, sort low level Jamon Serrano. OK, there was a scrawny weeny in the fridge too and rather than look at for the rest of my life I sniped that up as well. To be honest weenies will not be visiting this dish again...

In to the magic cast iron skillet it all went, of course with a little olive oil. I should have done the onions separately but who's counting.

Now comes the free form section. I tossed in some left over spaghetti, stirred it around and hey it looked pretty good but it certainly wasn't dangerous and out there and I suspect has been on Italian farm tables for 500 years. So to shake it up I broke 2 eggs, added some pre-grated bag guyere to the noodles and commenced to moving the stuff around the pan with two wooden spoons. After the eggs looked more of less cooked I sprinked on some Parmesan and tested the concoction on Zoe who gave it a favorable review by cleaning her plate and asking for more.

Alas this was not possible because there was just enough for moi. OK, I did slip her a few strands of pasta. Like I said, the only mistake was the old hot dog. Maybe spaghetti and hot dogs go together in the world of "Franco-American" but not in my kitchen. Hey no disrespect meant to "Spaghetti Os." I used to love that stuff. Who would of thought it, spaghetti in a can. Post war America was soooo easy.

Darrell is a genius...

This just in from my friend the genius writer:

Electricity flowed through the wires of his house, it rippled around the rooms and snaked through the outlet and slipped into the television set and coursed across the circuitry to ignite phosphors on and off until pixels danced and winked and altered their wavelength ultimately making Simon and Paula and that big black Randy animate as if they were real and not just a figment of a producer's imagination, a manifestation of a script written in silence while waiting for better ideas to emerge. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken and remember nothing. On the count of three, you will open your eyes and stumble into bed.

Darrell Williams

Fixing things

Last year I bought a very funky but lovely sounding guitar from a great old guy in Havana. Zoe pulled it out last Sunday to play the 5 and half year old blues. She strummed away for a while and then left it on the couch. I noticed that a pretty gnarly crack had developed on on the back. I immediately blamed the kid and had her go and clean the bathroom and wash the car... nah, she's always gentle with the instruments and besides we don't have a car.

I got on the internet, well I seem to always be on the internet... and googled "crack, accoustic guitar repair." I waded through all the sexual and drug related references and came cross this guitar maker who also teaches others how to make guitars. One of his students had written in to discuss fixing pretty much the same problem.

The guitar makers point was that the crack was probably caused by a change in humidity. Ditto... Havana humid to the point of needing a wet suit, Barcelona in the winter, dry as a bone.

So the guy says to first wet down the body of the guitar with a spray bottle and then stick it in a plastic garbage bag over night. Hmmm. OK I empty out a windex bottle and spritz my baby and then dug out out a garbage bag, put it inside and sealed off the neck with some masking tape. This apparently is supposed to re-humidify the instrument and will seal up the fissure that has been caused the wood drying out.

OK I wait until the next morning and remove the guitar from it's new damp environment. Viola! The wound healed!

Phase 2 was rubbing Elmer's glue to the now healed crack for " not less than 2 minutes using your finger tips." I cleaned up the excess glue with a wet paper towel as described and I now have a repaired guitar!

Much of my world is so abstract. The vagueness of what I do, the general lack of any kind of a schedule or a day to day rhythm... It felt good to do something physical and see the results of a small amount of labor. I 'll remember my success every time I play this old happily unfashionable guitar.

Sunday in Barcelona

Traditionally Sundays in Barcelona are for getting up early, fixing a big breakfast of bacon and eggs, hash browns, wheat toast, OJ and mugs of hot, hot coffee. Then it's off for an early bike ride and then on to a museum or two and finally a movie. IRONY! In general Spaniards stay up until 5 am 7 days a week. A typical Sunday consists of rolling out of the sack at 2 in the afternoon followed by hunk of dry bread and shot of espresso and depending on what you had the night before a shot of something else. Then it's off to lunch with some friends and then a movie and then a drink and then dinner and then a drink and then a club and then somehow it's 5 am again.

We came close to this today. Zoe woke me up at 8:30! I got her some juice and went back to bed. Everybody was officially up by 10:30. Good fer nuttin' lay-a-bout sinners were we.

A Sick Kid

Poor Zoe came back from school sick last night. The classic. The standard. The stomach flu. Yep lots of evacuation. We did the good parents thing and got her to bed. What felt good when I was kid when I was sick? My mom being with me. Soda crackers with margarine, Seven Up and Campbell's chicken noodle soup. An of course watching reruns of Perry Mason on TV.

Zoe's day was sort of similar but you can't find soda crackers or Seven Up here. Chicken Soup yes but no Perry Mason.

So you subsitute Catalan cooking shows and DVDs of Scooby Doo run off the laptop and you are almost there. But still those Perry Mason episodes were something; Della and Paul, Burger the DA and Perry sweating out a last minute on the stand confession from the dead guys nephew or business partner or wife. I'm sorry but bad Spanish Muppet clones cannot hold a candle to that.

Shadow of the Wind Time in BCN

It's definitely winter here. The trees are bare and it's damp and cold. Less people are on the streets. Barcelona is a very romantic city, a romantic city with a dark side. Black clouds gathering over the old amusement park on Tibidabo. Brooding modernista buildings with their organic shapes looking like grimacing mouths and bones. The old gothic part of town with it's labyrinth of dark and narrow streets. It's all in Carlos Ruiz Zafon's book, "The Shadow of the Wind." Get past the first chapter and you'll be hooked.

But for me considering my mood I think I need to re-read "The Great American Novel" by Philip Roth. One of the funniest books of all time. I kid you not. Hey! Anybody wanna make a movie of this! I know this director...