The Harvest On Its Way: A Birthday Dedication

It's with a heavy heart that I am in L.A. right now and NOT attending Blake's 35th birthday
in his backyard in San Francisco. I've got a valid excuse and it weighs about 21 lbs and crawls real fast.
I was along, via cell phone, for all of the decisions and hardships that came before this blessed event, so it's just not right that I'm AWOL. It sucks, and I spent all of today in a cranky mood.
For his birthday, Blake orchestrated a way for all of his friends who aren't afraid to get dirty and can handle a shovel to plant him a garden of his own replete with fruits, veggies and herbs. A chef should have his own artichokes, tomatoes and squash, right? Having friends with "agricultural"operations up in Mendocino County and lots of friends who know lots about landscaping, he should have it made. That, and a spit-roasted lamb - what more can someone with a belly want for?
Tonight's waxing crescent moon will glow over his new garden in his backyard. I look forward to the meals we will share over the next 35 years. Happy Birthday, saster.

Playing Swanee

You'd never know it now, but I spent ten years of my life taking weekly piano lessons. That's roughly 520 lessons! Put me in front of a piano now and I might play the same dirge that I was working on back when I stopped taking lessons at age 15. Or, I might piddle around and play a little part of Swanee by George Gershwin - lately, I find myself tapping it out on my son's Fisher-Price alligator xylophone. It needs some work...to say the least.

Over the years, I had four different piano teachers. The first was an older, bearded gentleman (at that time late 30's seemed "older") named Greg. He came to the house to teach me. We played a few songs that involved middle C. One song was called Halloween:

C-D-E, C-D-E, E-D-C, E-D-C: Halloween, Halloween, let's have fun, let's have fun

Bust that out at a holiday party. I accused Greg of stinking once. He never came back to the house after that. I was 5 years old. Years later, I realized that it wasn't him, but rather broccoli steaming. My mom was a vegetarian at the time.
Ava Rosenberg was next. She taught lessons to me and my brother out of a small studio at my school. She was sweet and had a dyed blond fuzzy mustache. I'll bet by now she's discovered wax is better than bleach for that kind of thing. She taught my brother how to play Saucer Man.

Then came Mrs. Phillips, who I studied under for the longest stretch of my career as a piano student. She worked at our synagogue and had actually given my parents lessons when they were newlyweds. She was a classic mean old lady who wore too much rose-scented perfume (luckily, she was never in the same room with Greg! Broccoli + Rose= ?). For years, she scolded me while I played, struck my hand with a pencil when it stumbled over the wrong notes and screamed, "that's an E, honey!" She entered me into recitals and forced me to play a duet with her on stage. These were my first episodes of anxiety that I can remember. I would get up on the stage, forget to say my name and what I would be performing, and do something really awkward like lick my lips in a circular motion. I must have looked quite psychotic. While on stage I would often blank-out on what piece I was playing - it was as if I had left my body there on the stage to fend for itself. I wonder if Mrs.Phillips is still kicking?

The last teacher I had, Tim Davis, is someone who keeps coming back to my thoughts. He died shortly after I quit taking lessons from him. Tim really wasn't a piano teacher by trade. He was, however, an excellent self-taught pianist and entertainer. My parents discovered and befriended him at a fancy party where he was performing. He was pretty stunning to behold: skin the color of caramel, a well-designed handlebar mustache and a body rippled with muscles that he didn't have to work for. He was a complete clown and really wasn't effective at teaching me piano. It probably had more to do with me and my programming. After years of traditional and classical instruction, I couldn't learn piano the groovy way. Playing by ear was out of the question. I needed to slave over sheet music, and I had no jazzy inclinations. Mrs. Phillips had ruined me.

Still, my parents payed Tim to come over every week. That's when I began working on Swanee by George Gershwin. Tim took away the sheet music and tried to teach me to feel the music. It's a project that was never completed. Perhaps my cousin, Jason, can sit me down and show me how it's done. We spent most of the lessons goofing off. Tim liked to imitate me, and I couldn't get enough of him. He made me laugh at myself and my mechanical approach to the keys. Sometimes we'd shout to each other during the entire lesson, as a means for more effective communication. He had nicknames for my different wardrobe ensembles. At that time, I was in a preppy, girly phase involving sweaters with hearts and tightly closed collars. He called my look "very puppy."
Tim and his wife, JoAnn, partied with my parents. Often, they would join us on our boat during the weekends. Tim was a one-man-party. They were guests at one of the rowdiest Thanksgivings that my house ever witnessed. Tim showed up at this jeans and tee-shirt event wearing a white tuxedo.
According to Tim, his mother was one of the vocalists from the original The Lion Sleeps Tonight - you know that backup melody? It was probably a lie, but I still think of Tim whenever I hear that ubiquitous tune.

Well, here's the heartbreaking part of this whole story. Apparently, Tim had a drug problem: crack, to be more specific. I never witnessed it, but JoAnn confessed the problem to my dad, who mentioned it blithely to me, as if a 15 year-old could handle that news. I became hysterical when I found out. I had only heard about people doing crack, and I never imagined that I actually knew one of these people. And, of all people, Tim! Things kind of fell apart for Tim; Jo Ann and her daughter kicked him out, and he stopped coming over to give me the lessons. My parents gave me the green light to abandon the piano, though I would, on very rare occasion, sit down and try to figure out the rest of Swanee. My dad still communicated with Tim, who was living in a rough part of town. He had become skinny and hollowed-out, but still maintained his handlebar mustache. I can't remember the last time that I saw Tim, but he didn't seem to have any special affection toward me at that point. Maybe he had left his body behind to fend for itself, like I did during those recitals. When you're a starry-eyed 15 year old, it's hard not to take things personally.

It's fun to think back and remember Tim and how he would croon along with my mechanical piano playing. I'm looking to get back into playing a musical instrument. Something where I can let go of my inner robot. It might not be the piano though. My dad, at 67, still takes piano lessons sporadically. He, too, plays like a robot, but one who's low on batteries. Next to him, I'm Ray Charles. My step-mother winces when he sits down to tickle the ivories. If Tim were around, he'd be marching alongside Dad at the piano like a member of the Korean People's Army with crossed eyes and his tongue wagging. Where did that Tim go?