ostinato anyone?

my friend B is the best. she is so full of life and energy, you just can't help but smile when you see her coming. the past week or so she's been taking an Orff certification class so her comments and answers to questions now come in a rhythm and hand drums. it's great. "let's go to the movie show" i'll have that stuck in my head the rest of the week. or "sanctuary chancel; sanctuary nave" (if you need these sung out you'll have to call me...typing in rhythm is a little tricky) B is just a wonderful woman who has such a great life ahead of her. i'm really glad she's in my life. we’re trekking around lake como tomorrow, provided it doesn’t rain. very exciting!

my other greatest friend ever is Tre. i got to chat with her last night which was a lot of fun, as usual. she had some shocking news. her very own j-man quit his football team this week. the season’s just started but he seemed to have valid reason. but anyway…tre is awesome. she’s always a ‘pick-me-up’ when I need it or just someone to be stupid with.

Tre comes to mind whenever I think of B. Tre is a percussionist, or was in college. Ah, the memories of pounding our drum sticks on her practice pad in McWench Hall. Too much fun. Tre taught me a lot about rhythm (hey, I’m a soprano – the orchestra is supposed to follow ME) and drumming. Thank goodness for her or I would never have passed percussion methods. Though I almost didn’t...

Percussion methods was taught by mr. pinerio. I think that’s how he spelt it. Who knows. He made the mistake of telling us a story about when he was in 7^th grade and got to play with the 8^th grade band or the high school band – something like that – because he was so talented. So the older percussionists would put him on bass drum whenever that was all that was called for. Then they would sit behind the percussion cabinet and heat up the metal mallets with a lighter. To make it even better they would put the mallets right by his neck or cheek then say, “Hey, Pinhead” and of course he’d turn then get burned. So needless to say my opinion of him wasn’t that high. Especially when the year before mr. reick had been there and I was so wanting to learn from him.

So anyway, I have two great pinhead moments: one was when we had to write a drum cadence. Ugh. I’m so not a composer but I threw something together anyway. It actually turned out okay but nothing like some of the others. And my best moment was my trapset final. It happened to fall the day after my 21^st birthday (which I had to Close at Arby’s for the first time as Crew Leader alone and my stupid boyfriend refused to go out for one drink with me so I had to go with Barry instead and ended up drinking WAY too much Hot Damn and beer) when I was hungover – one of the two times in my life. Percussion methods was at 7:10am because pinhead had to be at work at 8 (his ‘real’ job). My test was at 7:30 (and I overslept). So I got there and played the two basic rhythms I could manage but when it came time to play the bossa nova I just looked at him and said, “No, I can’t.” he said, “At least try” and I said, “Look, I know I can’t play it, I’ve tried all week and I’m not feeling well this morning so I don’t think that’s going to help my odds. I’d rather not try and waste your time and the rest of the class’s time. But thanks.” He said, “you’re going to fail that portion.” And I said, “well at least that’d be honest.” And sat down. At least I think all of that went down. I do remember telling him I didn’t want to waste class time trying something I couldn’t do…some of the rest of my comments might have been in my head.

Do you ever notice how memories meld together like that?