EKG music

2003-06-07 - 5:51 a.m.

It's not even six o'clock yet and here I am wide awake. It's Saturday, for goodness sake, and I don't have to work, what the heck am I doing awake? Well for starters I had a nightmare. I woke up crying this morning. And for another thing, I have cramps and I'm so nauseated. Ugh. Hello vacation.

So let me tell you about my dream. I have no idea what inspired this. Maybe I've been reading too much of Floodtide. He has been in my dreams before. At any rate, I was auditioning for a singing part in some sort of production. I don't remember what it was, but whatever it was I totally thought I was good enough to get the part. I went through the singing part of the audition with flying colors, I thought, no problem. But then there was a second half to the audition. The piano playing half. I didn't know this was going to be part of the audition and I didn't see what it had to do with getting the singing part I wanted. I walked into the room and there was a baby grand piano with a monitor instead of a music stand. Hooked up to the piano was a big set of headphones and a printer. There was a girl in there running the show, she was the same girl who, in real life, administered my MPJE. Also my mom was there. So I sat down at the piano and put the headphones on. The girl asked me how fast I would like the tempo to go and I told her to make it pretty slow. The screen lit up and filled with music. An orchestra started to play in my headphones. The music on the screen began scrolling and falling off the left side of the screen. Ack! I hadn't even started! Where are we? The girl stopped the music and restarted it, this time slower. This time I caught my cue and managed to come in on time. But my notes were hesitant and I kept stumbling and having to stop and pick up again later. When I first learned music, I learned it while playing the flute, which is obviously one note at a time and always on the treble clef. Later on I learned to play the trombone which is also only one note at a time but always on the bass clef. So for me looking at music, there's the flute clef and the trombone clef. Two completely separate mindsets. Sight reading piano music is hard for me because I have to keep switching back and forth between the mindsets. For some reason I never really developed a piano mindset. So anyway, in this dream, the music was going quickly enough that I didn't have time to switch back and forth. I eventually just stopped trying to play with my left hand at all and just concentrated on my right hand. This helped me keep up a bit, but I still sucked. Not only that but my mom was in the room with me and she was mad at me for sucking so badly. She kept saying, "You can play better than this! What are you doing?" And to add insult to injury, the printer kept printing the notes I was playing, on fine red graph paper like an EKG, and the girl would pull the pages off the printer and set them on the piano where I could see that what I was playing looked nothing like the notes that were steadily scrolling across the screen. Not that that was a surprise. But what could I do? I was doing the best I could and I was sucking and my dreams of getting that part were evaporating. I didn't see what playing the piano had to do with getting my singing part so I thought maybe they just made everybody do both parts of the audition and then they payed no attention to the piano playing section when considering people for the singing part. But I thought it would probably look better if I tried and failed miserably than if I quit in the middle so I stuck with it. Finally the piece finished and I could leave. The girl gave me copies of all my EKG music and I left, my mom following telling me, "Well, you sure screwed that up!" I woke up crying with frustration.

I also woke up this morning to find that someone had signed my guestbook. Someone, I should mention, who's guestbook I did not sign. This person kindly suggested that I put the cheese in my bum bum. I've decided that she must be from another country where "bum bum" is actually a term for "refrigerator." I mean in England when you say you "knocked her up" you actually mean that you went to her house and knocked on her door, right? So bum bum could mean refrigerator.

Last night I watched "About Schmidt." You know what? I seriously could've made it through my entire life without seeing Kathy Bates naked and been just fine with it. When I was watching the movie, as soon as the son-in-law came on screen, I knew I knew him from somewhere. Underneath all that ugliness was a really cute guy, who was he? I had to look him up. It turns out he was Dermot Mulroney, the best friend from "My Best Friend's Wedding." And do you know who he looks like? Cheesecake! Yeah, Cheesecake doesn't do that half smile thing that Dermot Mulroney does, but in that picture there imagine a slightly bigger nose, a little salt and pepper in that hair, and some intelligence in those eyes, and that's Cheesecake.

Why do I smell marijuana right now? It's certainly not coming from my house. It's probably wafting in over the back fence. Geez, people, it's six o'clock in the morning, isn't it a little early for that stuff?