Oldies

I have a very distinct memory of once thinking that I would never get to a point where I wasn't up on music. When a song would come on the radio and an adult would say, "Who is this?" I would be astounded and kind of embarrassed for them that they would let themselves get to that point. How do you not know who this is? I was maybe about 16 and it seemed impossible that I would ever stop listening to music or searching for new songs.

Folks, I'm there. I'm old and I just don't have the time nor the desire. I regularly turn on the radio and ask, "Who is this." I thought this day would never come. I still love music but it takes so much effort now to find anything good and new. I was at a show a few weeks ago and having a great time but what I would have done for a chair. And then a few days after that I was at another show (this was a freakish coincidence. It sounds like I go out all the time. I don't. I am a hermit.) and happened to be sitting in the back next to some grandparents while all the kids danced up by the stage. And I was quite content. When I'm not listening to NPR on my drive home I'm normally in silence, because I really like silence a lot. If the knitting and the early bed time and the dreams of the muumuu years hasn't already turned me into an 80 year old, this certain has.

In other music news, we ended up having a Classical Music Appreciate Night at my parents house on Sunday. We sat around and listened to pieces that we each loved. None of us are particularly up on classical music and they were mostly standards that everyone knows but I think everyone has a song that moves them.  Mine is Ode to Joy. It is manic and German and the sopranos are up in the stratosphere. What's not to love? I would like for it to be played at my funeral.

And in other, other music news I played on a different organ on Sunday and as I finished up the intro my finger knocked one of the pre-set buttons and suddenly we were in Westminster Abbey, or Notre Dame, or the National Cathedral, somewhere really, really majestic and grand. It maybe would have been appropriate if there had been a thousand people there for a coronation rather than the 100 there for just regular old church. There was so much bass! And because it was a new organ for me I had no idea how to change it mid-song. Hitting the button again did nothing and I didn't want to try any other buttons because who knows what other kind of pre-sets there were. There's always a Christmas bells pre-set button. This happened to me once before and it was as if Satan had picked the stops, like I had somehow tapped into the Pipes of Hell.  So I just stuck with the grandeur and played through all four verses like the Queen was about to march in.