Who Am I? An inside look at this blogger.

Who Am I?  A rambling bit of my thoughts about things.

I just completed watching "Musical Minds" on Yuma's Public cable TV channel 8.  The program was about how music had intertwined with the minds of handicapped people and changed their lives in this narrow section of their lives.  Music has almost always been part of my life, from family times around the piano with my father playing his violin, to piano lessons on and off from age 5, to school bands - trumpet, drums, bass horn, French horn, choirs - soprano in 4th grade to base in college, organ concerts and finally ragtime washboard.  The piano has always drawn me and I am hard pressed to not set down at any keyboard and play - always in the key of C and always by "ear", mostly improvised - just a melody in my mind expressed through my fingers.

By now you probably think "Wow, an accomplished musician," until you realized I disappointed many music teachers by never going beyond the basics - "I can play the instrument, now on to something else."  On the keyboard I quit reading notes as soon as I learned the melody.

But, back to handicaps.  Among my accomplishments were; not lettering in sports in spite of going out all four years and playing my freshman year on a football team of only 13 players, screwing up my 8 note French horn solo on "Over the Rainbow" in 7th grade, never making the honor role, almost flunking college English because I couldn't pass a spelling test, etc.  When our boys tested gifted in grade school, we learned about the stress of raising and teaching gifted students.  Sometime later I tested for, and was admitted, to Mensa, the high IQ organization.

Yes, being intelligent can be an handicap.  My spelling is bad - in college I typed with the dictionary next to me, now it is spell-check.  Finding most things easy does not prepare you for the tough things.  I can't read music or transpose keys.  I have had about 35 jobs in 60 years, most less than 2 years.  I finally graduated from uiversity in 1999 at age 60.  I have no friends beyond my last three years of high school in Nebraska.

But, through it all there has been music, not always accomplished music, but music.  My first record club was classical, I sang a solo at my confirmation, remember a sacred harp concert featuring The Holy City, went to a theater organ concert in the fifth grade, first "popular" record was Al Jolson's  "The Jolson Story".  My first rock purchase was a CD, Eric Clapton's "Unplugged".  In the late 1940's I could have aced "Name That Tune", and still knew all the WWI songs my parents did, and they were both born before 1900.

Whether music is in your soul, or heart, or mind, I don't know.  But, I know that it is "there."  In the late 1980's we lived in Sedalia, Missouri, and attended the Scott Joplin Ragtime festival.  During the festival I would come home feeling creative and would sit down at the piano and play.  When I was sad the music would become more somber, when happy more joyful.  I had an opportunity to play a $35,000.00, 9 foot, concert grand and could feel the music coming out of my fingers, it just flowed and it was GRAND!

The TV program also investigated why some people like music and some don't.  They found that the brain not only distinguishes between pop and classical, but even between Bach and Beethoven.  Maybe that is why I have all five albums of Mitch Miller's "Sing Along With Mitch" and have no knowledge of, or desire for, all the 1960's through today's popular music.

 

Well, now you have taken a little peek into who you are reading; a bit odd, a lot sarcastic, quite opinionated, intelligent, but not street smart.  My first car was a 1937 Buick Special, 2 years older than me, my present car is a 1983 Datsun 280ZX.  I live in Yuma, Arizona, where Summer has finally arrived, it will be over a hundred degrees all this week.  Maybe the sun has fried my brain a bit.  And people think you are crazy.