Day 097: Grab that shovel—Dig up your past
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day 97
— Grab that shovel—Dig up your past
07-November-1971
(Sun.)
TRANSCRIPT
Busy day. Vienna Choir Boys. Practice (3 hours). Saw
2 concerts. First (afternoon)—played Brahms
Variations and a Tschaikovsy
Piano concerto. Good concert. Always play
popular stuff.
The Brahms
Requiem was real good. Beautiful
music. Good day.
REFLECTIONS
1971–a
great concert day. Despite my
dyslexia, I saw the
Vienna Boys' Choir at mass.
[Grammar
note: I have fixed my earlier posts referring to the
Vienna Boys’ choir by adding a possessive
apostrophe—but I usually don’t write it that way.
Another question for Grammar Girl, should you use the
possessive when referring to entities, or can the
apostrophe be omitted? Do we say, “I went to the
Yankees’ World Series games?”]
Two
concerts: one in the afternoon and one at night. On
the menu,
Brahms
(Requiem,
Variations) and a
Tchaikovsky
Piano concerto. When I am
vague about the work, it doesn’t make sense to talk
about it. The
Brahms
Requiem
is a
beautiful choral piece and performed often. The
Brahms variations are probably the
Variations
on a Theme
by
Hadyn, also
well known. Brahms also wrote variations on a
theme by Schumann, for piano, and others as well.
[For a change, I am proving links to Ask.com and
Answers.com, two other very nice search engines.]
[I don’t
generally speak in great detail about the sightseeing
or music in the blog. That detail would not be from
memory, but from looking it up and then relaying it
on to you. Instead I provide links. If this blog ever
became popular, I would prefer to have a
user-contribution area like a forum or FAQ where
articles and discussion could occur about the music
and the sightseeing. We’ll see.]
2007–Digging
up the past. A few days
ago, I mentioned that I was digging up the past and
discovering all types of old cassette tapes, photos,
and even music manuscript of music that I had
written. These were stored away in boxes and cartons
and while I threw many, many, things away (including
most letters of Anjali), for some reason I kept the
tapes and my music scribblings. I’m glad I did.
The
past is a blast. I am
loving it. I have not visited these items I found
in
decades. It is a
lot of fun rummaging through them and bringing up old
memories and old creative projects. Here are some
things I found—my cassette letter home, a cassette
letter from Anjali, a couple of jazz/fusion pieces
from 1982, a series of pop songs from 1982 with me
singing them (holy cow), many musical “roughs,” those
music snippets I never finished, and many others. Oh,
and…
1971
guitar songs. I found
the cassette tape where I play folk guitar and sing
the songs I wrote for Anjali in 1971. The songs are
from the heart (corny by today’s standards) and my
singing is quiet and wispy (not good). I had to laugh
and you would laugh. Eveyone would laugh. Do I want
everyone laughing at me? Should I release them? No!
Paparazzi
be damned. I think I
have made a decision on my 1971 singing and
performance. If I ever become as famous as Larry and
Sergey of Google fame, then I will release these
tapes. They would be the top-hit-all-time on YouTube.
I would first release them to one of the newspaper
tabloids. The price is ONE MILLION DOLLARS EACH! It
would be worth it.
By the way, that is my general advice to all
Hollywood stars that are bombarded by paparazzi. Take
the photos yourself, sell them yourself to the
tabloids, and keep the money yourself. Why give it to
the paparazzi? Britney, take plenty of nude photos
and sell them. Often. At ONE MILLION DOLLARS EACH. I
would even buy a few issues. Then those guys will
leave you alone and you can get on with your life.
Despite my not-funny humor, it would be nice for you
to be left alone so you can get on with your life.
John’s
edict. So my
proclamation to all of you, young and old, is to get
that shovel and
dig up your past. (The one
exception is if you killed someone and buried them in
your backyard, then
don’t dig up
your past.) It will be a lot of fun. You will enjoy
it. I am.
Your memories don’t belong in a
shoebox.
See you tomorrow.
John
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