POP

When opening champagne, the trick is simply not to brace the bottle against anything. It seems counterintuitive, but just hold the bottle in one hand and ease the cork out with the other. Don’t hold it down on the counter.

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YOU KNOW YOU’RE GONNA RIDE ON THE BLUE HIGHWAY

So I score this major triumph today in the quiet corporate corridors’ ambience of air-conditioned hiss. Something small to anyone else. You don’t need to understand. But I score and then I am swallowing back the irresistible rush of bliss, biting down hard to contain the yawp of joy that is trying to tear itself out of my throat, and suddenly, unbidden, my mind is flooded with the recollection of the Billy Idol song Blue Highway from his 1980s record Rebel Yell. Uh huh. So I guess I still got a rock and roll heart.

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GREGOR SAMSA LIVES NEXT DOOR

So I’m putting up this clean, modern set of Ikea floating shelves in the bedroom. Two big shelves, one little. I find first time out that the wall is made of this crumbling stuff that was invented after plaster but before drywall. It’s not firm. Screw spreaders are necessary. Drywall anchors. Whatever you call ’em where you’re from; those plastic things that go in the wall and spread out when you screw the screw into them.

The big ones take ten screws, the little one six. The procedure for each screw is this:

Drill hole

Ream hole out with drill

Hammer spreader into hole

Drill screw into spreader.

So I have to do this 26 times, which is fine, but the guy who lives on the other side of the wall, let’s call him Gregor Samsa, is this crazy guy. I think he’s Russian. He has a big bushy beard and is stooped over and holds one shoulder higher than the other in a perpetual cringe. He’s only in his 40s, I’d say, but looks exhaustedly ancient. When one sees him in the hall, which is rarely, he clings to the wall, avoids all eye contact, and darts back into his place as quickly as possible.

His door has an obsessively taped-up, madly hand lettered sign that says, “Fliers (sic) - NO. Visitors - NO. Postmaster - LEAVE LETTERS ON FLOOR,” which is funny, because the ‘postmaster’ in fact leaves letters in the mailboxes downstairs.

Anyway, the guy has all the classic hallmarks of the paranoid schizophrenic, and here I am drilling, reaming, hammering and screwing into his wall 26 times, and the whole time I am just imagining him twitching like a bird, eyes rolling, mouth foaming, heart pounding, certain that they really are finally coming through the walls for him.

I would have knocked on the door to warn him, but are you really gonna knock on a door that says, “Vistors - NO”? It probably would have had the same effect as the drilling, reaming, hammering and screwing.

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GUITARS, CADILLACS AND GAMELAN MUSIC

Let’s say you don’t know too much about Gamelan music. That puts me ahead of you, but not by much. All I know is that the Balinese hammer on bronze xylophonesque instruments and make a joyful noise. But I’m fond, dear readers, of the music of American minimalist composers, especially of the mid-period work of Steve Reich, whose Drumming has been a major touchstone for me and was heavily influenced by Gamelan music.

I finally heard some actual Gamelan at my brother’s house, both before and after his trip to Bali last fall. Also, I stole from him a disc by a guy named David Parsons, a field musicologist who took some of his Gamelan recordings and mixed them up into a weird new-age brew that is beloved of some kids in the deep rave scene. Weird. But it caught my ear and made me happy.

When my brother got back he loaned me a book by Colin McFee. McFee was a Canadian-born composer who spent a lot of time in Bali and was also highly influenced by, and influential upon, Gamelan music. The book didn’t hook me, but I was wowed by some of his music a few weeks ago on the radio, so Killer got me a couple of McFee discs.

So anyway, what I’m saying is that Gamelan music had formed a kind of dwell point in the future, a shockwave whose ripples were getting closer and closer together as I near the moment of its source, which is still in the future.

The biggest ripple yet came when I opened the local entertainment paper the week before last and saw an ad. “Gamelan Music Workshop” at the Indonesian Embassy. It was like seeing a portal. Like seeing the glowing cubic centimetre of magical opportunity floating in front of me.

I ordinarily never go to stuff like that. But I went, thinking I’d get to hear a Gamelan orchestra first hand, maybe. On the way out I joked to Killer that maybe some guy had brought a set of Gamelan instruments to Ottawa and was looking for recruits to play.

And that’s what it was. A Montreal musicologist who studied in Bali wants to start a troupe here. Has the instruments. Sounds possibly willing to consider those who, like me, have never played a lick of music in their entire lives.

And so, now I’m waiting to hear, maybe next week, if there are tryouts. And I really want in.

I want to join a Gamelan orchestra.


A quick footnote to the very few who might care; the Deutsche Grammaphone double-disc recording of Drumming, which features a better performance than the Nonesuch one, and has a dramatically elegant modernist grey cover to boot, is once again available, this time as an import from Universal Music. I spotted it at the Younge Street HMV in Toronto the other day and have it on order now.

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THE MOON BLUES

I had my first piano lesson on Thursday night. Half an hour of the basics. Your hands. Your posture. Middle C. Not even scales yet. On Friday morning I skipped ahead in the book and learned the C and G7 chords before work. Saturday morning it was F major. About ten seconds after I knew my third chord I wrote my first song. I played it very quietly so as not to wake the Killer. And the neighbours. It was 6:30 a.m.

The song is a little space country heartbreaker called The Moon Blues. I’m fairly certain it’s not an actual blues song, since blues uses stuff I can’t possibly have learned yet. I don’t know. Twelve bars. “Blue” notes. Stuff. But it’s called The Moon Blues and it’s based on a C-G7-F-C chord progression that you repeat and repeat and repeat. It’s more like an infinite musical haiku. My first song and I’m already inventing new forms. The Space Country Infinite Musical Haiku. You laugh now, but one day it’ll be a Grammy category.

The lyrics:

I’m packing all my things
And moving to the moon.
I tried to love you, baby,
But I got the moon blues.

I would show you the music, but I can’t fully transcribe it yet. It’s got some sophisticated eighth notes or something in the melody that I don’t know how to write down. I hadda jot it down for myself with a combination of real notes and chickenscratch algebra on the back of a napkin. I went out for the day and when I came back I thought it was a dream. But I put the napkin on the rack and plinked out the song. It worked, and I started weeping. Not because I got the notation down well enough, but because the song is so damn sad.

I’ll write it down for you after I learn how. Should be a few more lessons. And as soon as I figure how to jack the keyboard into the computer, I’ll rip you an mp3.

A four days ago I had never played a lick of music in my life. Now I’m on my way to stardom. And I haven’t even told you about the Balinese Gamelan orchestra that I’m trying to join yet.

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