How Not to Recover from Dental Surgery in an Efficient and Timely Manner

 

Zero energy.  Zeeeeeeeeeerooooooooo.  Ugh.  Adrenaline spikes optional.  Will get to that in a minute.

            Meanwhile, it's raining.  There's nothing like teeming rain not to encourage me to stop being a total wimp and get those poor sad time-short-from-yesterday hellhounds outdoors.  Poor sad hellhounds agree about this for just long enough to get outdoors, and then they stare at me, through the teeming wet stuff, with disbelief and, when I don't show any signs of doing something about it, start clamouring to get back indoors again.  No, no, we have to go march around the (soggy) landscape for a while.  Develops character.* 

            But zero energy and the mood-oppressive qualities of rain did mean that I tottered off to my so-called piano lesson this afternoon looking forward to a cup of tea and listening to Oisin play—I've told you he's now got this TOTALLY FABULOUS organ computer programme?  And over the last few months the bits of kit to go with it keep appearing and getting plugged in.**  His music room isn't that big, so when he starts doing his Phantom of the Opera act it pretty well pastes your hair back.  The funny thing is how glorious it is. 

            In hindsight I realise that it is a measure of Oisin's profound self-restraint as a music teacher that when I told him I didn't like recorded organ music he didn't throw me out and tell me never to darken his door again.  (Slightly in my defense this was before I realised he loved the pipe organ above all things.)  He let me stay long enough to explain that it's what I call the bullying of it:  it seems to me to come out of standard stereo speakers like that third grader who used to wipe the pavement with me every day after school, let me see, fifty-two years ago, when I was in first grade.  Heavy, hard, noisy, and mean.  Although (as Oisin likes to point out) his new paragon runs on two stereo speakers . . . trust me.  It's different.  A Friday afternoon without Oisin playing his electronic monster and pasting my hair back is now a melancholy shadow of what it should be.

            Last week he'd given me a print-out of the information page for a seminar he's running with a local voice teacher,*** for voice students and piano students to learn a little more about the art of singing with accompaniment.  Did I know anyone who might be interested in playing the piano?  It's easier to find nascent singers than nascent accompanists, and they're short piano players.  No, I don't, not in this country anyway.  Well, take it with you, he said, flapping the page at me.  In case you think of anyone.

            I didn't think of anyone.  And the page has apparently already entered its second life as scratch paper, because when I looked for it today I couldn't find it.  Not like this is a big deal—although I did ask Oisin last week if this was the sort of seminar where someone, ie me, could come along just to listen.  I'm interested in both sides of this particular architectural divide and would like hearing some of the nuts and bolts of it discussed.

            I now forget exactly how it came up, since the blood started coming out of my ears shortly thereafter, but today I asked if he'd found out if tomorrow's seminar was permitting rogue audience members and he looked slitty-eyed for a minute and then told me . . . that I should be taking the seminar as an accompanist.

            IS HE OUT OF HIS TINY UNGLEBLARGING MIND?

            Has he forgotten that I can barely play for him?  Because I'm so preoccupied with the nervous breakdown attendant on anything remotely resembling public performance, ie that anyone else can hear me?  That when I bring him something I've written I make him play it?  IS HE JUST CRAZY OR IS HE DANGEROUS?

            A! D! R! E! N! A! L! I! N! E!   S! P! I! K! E!

            So.  Anyway.  I'm flattered silly, but as totally appalling compliments go, this is about as grotesque and horrifying as it gets.  BLEAGH BLAH URGH AAAURP, I said, or words to that effect.†  He did acknowledge—and I am grateful for small favours—that if he were going to try to make me do this—It would be good for you! he kept saying.  Being a New York Times bestseller would be better for me! is my response—he should have got me in a necklock several weeks back and held my head under water till I agreed to sign up.††  But . . . [bad language here].  One of the things that is probably going on is that he has remembered, in that really annoying way of good teachers, that in a weak moment I've admitted that I have a secret fantasy of being an accompanist.  It's the old practical thing again.  For someone who has fatal stage fright it's a bit weird, but there's an upper limit to my desire to polish up my performance of anything for the hellhounds.†††   I was never going to be Mitsuko Uchida or Susan Gritton‡ but third-string back-up accompanist to the school chorus or back row of the chorus for the local amateur theatre group . . . that sounds like fun.  Well, sort of.  If I could find the 'off' button to the Freaking Out.

            I should stay at home and read more.

 * * *

 * I also have a strange desire to demonstrate in public the art of picking up after your dog, so that the dog-free will see that it happens.  I like—well, sometimes I like—watching the faces of people walking toward us.  The friendly are friendly:  they're fine, except when there are small leaping children involved, because Chaos, not unnaturally, immediately wants to leap too.  The indifferent don't trouble me:  not everyone understands the marvellous furry excellence of dogs.^  It's the ones whose faces tell me that if it were up to them, dogs would be banned, or at least not allowed on public ground, that worry me.  And I always wonder if this may have something to do with indiscriminate piles of dog crap about the place.  

^ Poor sad deprived things.  I do just about understand that not everyone wants a dog.  I am staggered by people who have no interest in companion animals at all.  I don't mean people who can't have them, due to landlords or allergies or other luckless circumstances.  I mean people who are just not interested.  It's like missing a limb or not being able to feel pain or something.  Not to them, presumably.  

** At present he's moaning about keyboards.  He wants to upgrade.  About time, I say, crisply.  He has a pedalboard that is a creature of ash-and-ebony beauty aside from mere function, and he should have keyboards to match, rather than these leftover things from his little attic recording studio.  He keeps trying to be restrained and sensible.  I keep trying to stop him being restrained and sensible.  He really shouldn't talk to me about it.  I am a bad influence.^

^ I'm trying. 

*** No.  She's serious.  I think she'd make me cry.^

^ No, I haven't rung the Cherub yet.  Hate me.  Go on, I know you want to.

† I may have said something about how if they do it again next year, I might think about it if I were given enough advance warning.  I hope I didn't say this.  

†† A few weeks ago wouldn't have been enough:  I've been booked for yesterday's frelling dental surgery for a long time.  And—barring adrenaline spikes, which, frankly, put my recovery back—if I'm zero today I'll be about 50% tomorrow if I'm lucky.   

††† Note that Oisin still hasn't heard me sing.  Here I have this experienced, professional accompanist available at the drop of a Friday afternoon . . . and I keep chickening out.^

^ I rest my case.

‡ Besides, being a world-famous pianist or soprano would mean touring.  I already don't tour as a very-small-time-semi-world-famous author.