Gypsy part of town

[pennyplant]

You mean the harmonica doesn't make you hyperventilate?  They always made me feel a little light-headed 

Pennyplant

[Hopalong]

Oh. I thought that feeling was sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy! 

Just kidding. I just find the sound very peaceful, the old-cowboy-at-the-campfire-in-Montana kind of sound. Not rocky-blues, so much....just oooooold things, like "Oh Shenandoah" played slowly...

(I adore blues, but that's not the kind of playing I want to do on the harmonica, though I'd love to learn blues piano)

haven't tried the blues harp as a sleeping method yet!

Hops

[pennyplant]

I work with someone whose son used to tell people (when he was about three), "Me and my dad like to play the blooooooooz!"  His dad is a very good blues harmonica player who even teaches it to others once in awhile.  So, maybe that little guy really will play the blooooooooooz someday!

Harmonicas are pretty cheap compared to a full drum set or a violin.  I think you're on the right track, Hopsy!!

PP

[lightofheart]

Hi Pennyplant,

I like talking about this topic, too. Makes me  Thank you for singing the first note here, and drawing us in with gypsies.

My son started to want to play the clarinet.  I couldn't believe it.  He said he wanted to play whatever instrument makes the sound of the adults' voices on the Charlie Brown cartoons.  How funny is that?

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It's  funny. Told my H., he said it's no coincidence that the funniest reason anyone ever had to play the clarinet turned out to be about the trombone.

So, I'm working on telling myself why not?  People do worse things with money than buy a violin for a few hundred dollars.  Drums might be really affordable as I'm sure I've seen practice sets that are small enough for your lap.  It might be fun to be a 45 year-old drummer.  We shall see what kind of progress I can make in this particular lifetime.

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Keep telling yourself why not, please. imho, you're already making excellent progress this lifetime. And Hops, do get that harmonica! I'm thinking about the piano. Maybe one day we could be a Child-at-Heart Trio...technically imperfect, but legendary for enthusiasm?

Have you ever gone to a concert in the park and seen the kids just dancing away up front?  Then there is always one adult who also gets carried away with the music.  Arms and legs flying.  And somebody in the audience makes a comment about them looking spastic or something.  But the dancer doesn't hear it and probably wouldn't care anyway.  To be that in the moment and that outside of my self-imposed inhibitions would be so wonderful.  I still seem to be caught up in that invisible audience of the teenage years.

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imho, it's a sin to make fun of anyone's dancing; innocent expressions of joy are sacred. Shame on the teacher who said that to your Mom! (maybe he'll hobnob in the afterlife with Mr. D.) These silencing/negative tape mentions remind me of the Mark Twain quote: Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt; sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth.

Re. adults and dancing,  Mon. night my H. plays the best gig of the year, I absolutely love it. Wish I could take you, PP; I know you'd have a ball. We take a boat out to this little island just off the coast, maybe 300 people live there. Everyone brings folding chairs and the band sets up on the town dock, with the sun setting over the ocean behind them. The whole island comes, toddlers to dodderers, and everyone who can dance does, in groups and circles, bouncing up the aisles, 80-year-olds with canes; dogs, too. People shout along with the songs they know and make up words to the ones they don't. The 1st year we moved here, from a huge (and especially unfriendly) city, I must've teared up half a dozen times out of sheer joy. Five years later, I still bring the tissues.

Happy, happy Fourth of July to you and your family, Pennyplant. Hope you have much sun and fun and most excellent music!

LoH

PS- The snotty woman at the party? Two hours later, she came over and thanked me for what I said. Said I'd done her a favor, that she worked 18 hour days (same huge newspaper as my H.) with people who were mostly even snottier than her and sometimes she forgot to hear herself. I was  glad to have a chance to apologize...felt bad as soon as I said it; pretty snotty of me to call her snotty! I'm an ex-reporter, we wound up trading freaky newsroom stories and drank a shot of tequila together.

[pennyplant]

Keep telling yourself why not, please. imho, you're already making excellent progress this lifetime. And Hops, do get that harmonica! I'm thinking about the piano. Maybe one day we could be a Child-at-Heart Trio...technically imperfect, but legendary for enthusiasm?

..................

Re. adults and dancing, Mon. night my H. plays the best gig of the year, I absolutely love it. Wish I could take you, PP; I know you'd have a ball. We take a boat out to this little island just off the coast, maybe 300 people live there. Everyone brings folding chairs and the band sets up on the town dock, with the sun setting over the ocean behind them. The whole island comes, toddlers to dodderers, and everyone who can dance does, in groups and circles, bouncing up the aisles, 80-year-olds with canes; dogs, too. People shout along with the songs they know and make up words to the ones they don't. The 1st year we moved here, from a huge (and especially unfriendly) city, I must've teared up half a dozen times out of sheer joy. Five years later, I still bring the tissues.

Went online a few days ago and looked up violins.  I'm thinking it's do-able.  There is all kinds of info regarding the parts of the instrument, how to stand and hold it, quality, etc.  Four strings--doesn't seem so overwhelming to me afterall.  I expected to be mystified and overwhelmed by the info as it has been over thirty years since I have done anything musical besides listen.  But I could feel a little pull.  I think it might still be in there somewhere.  So, maybe that will be my Christmas present this year.

Your Fourth of July concert--how I wish every community could experience this kind of open joy.  Where I live, everyone is so very inhibited.  Maybe that is the explanation for such narrow-mindedness in the presence of those who will dance.  It gets under the skin to see someone being free right in front of those who feel imprisoned.  Strikes too close to their hurting hearts.  So much healing to do in this world!

I really appreciate your stories and viewpoint, LoH.  And I bet we can get people to dance to the music our trio will play.  Or at least some foot-stomping and hand-clapping.  They can really let it out at our concerts!!! 

Pennyplant

[lightofheart]

Hi Pennyplant,

I really appreciate your stories and viewpoint, LoH.  And I bet we can get people to dance to the music our trio will play.  Or at least some foot-stomping and hand-clapping.  They can really let it out at our concerts!!!

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Right back at you, PP. imho, you do much thoughtful exploring in your posts, learning and sharing as you go; you always get me thinking just reading along. I'm a sucker for writers who toss out surprises, and your posts are rich with new-ground ideas. Also, you do a heckuva job storytelling and setting a scene...I think your gifts there'd be the envy of half the fiction folks in my writers group.

Maybe we could invite the crowd to dance on stage, like Queen Latifah does. Reminds me of the band Saffire, The Uppity Blues Women, also a trio. They all had day jobs till their 40s or 50s, then started making albums and touring, mostly as Grammas. imho, got to hand it to gals who can turn menopause into a wailing, must-dance song. Wild Women Don't get The Blues, indeed!

I hope you do get a violin if it keeps pulling...maybe you'll start dreaming in songs, puzzling out new compositions in your sleep. And there's no reason you couldn't learn violin and drums, if you want. Here's to your creative doability, and wings for the trip!

 
LoH

[Stormchild]

Thank You PennyPlant!

My new but already very used copy of Underdog World Strike   is presently on its way out of state in a friend's car CD player.

I have not seen these folks in a couple of years. I went to visit them before the TG holiday, and when we went to lunch I drove, and insisted they listen to a couple of tracks -- starting with track 15, the mostly instrumental one, and then backing up to track 12. We never got to the one that has a bit of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony in it as a 'jazz break', so I loaned them the CD to listen to on the road.

Tickled pink, they were, by the lyrics, including the Ukrainian accented dirty English words which fortunately I warned them about ahead of time,

and very impressed by the excellent musicianship.

Even more tickled they were when I handed them the CD and said, "Here, have some Road Music, drive on spiritual path!!!! Just please bring back, it is the only copy that I have, for myself, my friends!"

Pplant, if you hadn't posted about these guys, I would never have discovered their music, and it made a pleasant visit so much fun. Thank you!!!!!

Added on edit: BTW - they did ask how on earth I found out about this group, and I told them - from someone in one of my online discussion groups

... thought you'd like to know: goodness travels.

[pennyplant]

Stormy, I like your friends already and I haven't even met them!  They seem to have very good taste in music and friends.

Thanks for bringing up the thread again.  I haven't read it over again in quite awhile.  It's funny to read about my son and his spiked hair again.  Just yesterday he was in the bathroom shaving his head and telling me that he feels like he has outgrown the spikes.  He still likes it and enjoys doing his hair that way, but had been thinking it had gotten kind of juvenile.  He wants to get his driver's license picture re-taken in February when he turns 21 because he feels embarrassed to have anybody see his 16-year-old self now.  And I thought, he is so lucky that he got to do something he enjoyed so much for as long as he enjoyed it and then let it go when he was ready to.  It never was a power struggle or a negative statement he was making, to do his hair in an odd way.  But he now looks at it as a young thing he did that no longer fits quite as well the person he is becoming.  I was just so impressed with his thought process.  Now he's thinking he'll just do the punk hair once in a while for fun.

It really is interesting to see a young person grow up in a natural way at his own pace.  We missed seeing that with our oldest since he went away to school and did a lot of that growing and changing away from us.  And we didn't see ourselves do that at all because we had job and family responsibilities at age 18.  Our growth and development got stalled as a result and we didn't even know what that part of life was all about.  We didn't know it existed!

We're lucky to get to see this with our youngest son and lucky that he shares so much of it with us.  I'm very happy, relieved actually, that we didn't make the mistake of trying to "mold" him.

I'm still thinking about the violin, too.  Did find out there is a teacher in town who takes on adult violin students.  So, finding a teacher is not going to be an obstacle.  Maybe 2007 will be the year of music!

Pennyplant

[Stormchild]