A Blind Man Sees It

Zestful Blog Post #209

A friend of mine blew my mind the other day, and I want to see if yours gets similarly blown.

Back when Marcia and I lived in California, we sold our condo in the East Bay en route to moving north to the woods of Washington. We were fretting over an imperfection in the kitchen floor when our real estate agent said dismissively, “It would take a blind man to see it!” We felt better, and that funny locution entered our lexicon.

After we got settled in our little house in the big woods, I happened to make friends with a guy who is a super talented trombonist (regional symphonic soloist level), a piano tuner, and a typewriter repair specialist. His name is Jay, and he was born without eyes. Here’s how Jay figures it: Evidently, the Depression hit God as well and he hadn’t the wherewithal to update his supply. So, he asked my soul if it would be okay if he gave me good hearing, curiosity, and a love of the ridiculous. My soul must have agreed, so here I am. Actually, SHE probably made that bargain. A HE would simply have said, “ah well, get over it.” Only Jay can make you laugh talking about being without eyeballs. He wears cool sunglasses.

From his youngest days, Jay figured out work-arounds to do what he wanted. For instance, after he learned to ride a two-wheeler(!), he mastered navigating his neighborhood by echolocation. He got an education, worked real jobs, fell in love, married, the whole deal. I knew his lovely wife, who, sadly, is no longer with us.

Some time in the aughts, Jay and I played Leroy Anderson’s symphonic novelty piece “The Typewriter” as a duet in the local symphony, using two typewriters from his extensive collection. That’s a story in itself, but I’m trying to stay on track here. Now he lives in Georgia and I live in Florida. He’s still playing the trombone, and he’s also gotten into change ringing (coordinated bell-tower team music). He’s still fixing and reconditioning typewriters, using his senses of touch, hearing, and—yes, I’ve witnessed it—even smell.

I got in touch with him recently to ask about a typewriter for another performance of the Anderson piece, coming up next concert season for the South Shore Symphony Orchestra (Tampa Bay area) with yours truly as soloist. He said he had a machine for me, a 1926 Underwood 4 that should sound great. He sent me this photo:

[Photo by Jay Williams]

As a side note, he told me he’s exploring the possibility of becoming a photographer. [Mind blown.] He snapped the picture with a digital camera, figured out how to transfer the file to his computer, and sent it to me as an email attachment. He said his stepson is a professional photographer who gifted him with the camera. He knows the photo is blurry, and realized he needs to hold the camera steadier. Having worked as a news photographer, I gave him a couple of tips on that. Next he sent this photo, of another, recently acquired, machine, a Yost #1 from 1887:

[Photo by Jay Williams]

Jay intends to make more photographs, and he and his son are thinking they could put together a gallery of the pictures. I thought about it, and I’m like, my God, yeah. A sightless person faces something he’s interacting with, using his other senses, and captures an image he’ll never experience. The image will be something other than ‘what it’s supposed to be.’ But it will be something. I can’t describe how profoundly that first photo struck me. Layer upon layer of implications. I learned on line that blind photography is a thing—at least there are a few people doing it. Some of them are partially sighted, and some of them have their images manipulated by sighted people.

Jay, I know you’ll read this (because, software). If you do go forward with photography, I hope you’ll also write about the images you make: the things you were sensing and feeling at the moment of the snap. Wouldn't that be cool?

What is in this story for writers, artists, creative people of all sorts? Simply that there are no limits. Never say, “Yeah, yeah, but,” again. No need to. Look beyond, and keep looking.

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Getting Paid to Play

Zestful Blog Post #128

Symphony season has started up again, with all its challenges and profound joys. I play the timpani in the South Shore Symphony Orchestra, a young, semiprofessional ensemble that will give concerts this season in Sun City Center and Carrollwood, Florida. (Local friends: first concert is a 2 p.m. matinee this Sunday, Oct. 18 at the UCC in Sun City Center.)

The musicians receive a percentage of ticket sales, and that's unusual. So far, the pay amounts to hamburger-and-gas-money. But having played in orchestras where every key person—conductor, executive director, owners of concert venues, program printers—gets paid except the musicians, this makes me happy.

See, somehow the deal is that musicians are supposed to play for the love of it, and we should even feel a little dirty accepting money for a job well done. Creative types work for nothing all over the place, and it seems a given that everybody’s supposed to be OK with it. But I say to hell with that. If the marketplace will yield up money for your efforts, you ought to get a fair share.

Because the money is a symbol of respect.

In the case of the performing arts, many organizations rely on donations besides ticket sales, and boards of directors and volunteers serve for no pay, which the performers should rightly appreciate. It all depends on popularity: “The Lion King” rakes in big bucks, “Turandot” doesn’t cover costs. That’s a fact of the marketplace as well.

As for authors, we’re actually in a pretty good position these days. You can get a publishing contract with a royalty schedule, or you can self-publish and keep control and the profits. Yet writers have many opportunities to give it away: to news and gossip aggregators, literary journals, and so forth. Even social media amounts to unpaid contribution of content.

 [Part of the large percussion array required for the upcoming SSSO concert…]

The trick is to figure whether the free exposure will do you enough good to justify the effort. The prestigious literary journals, most of which pay nothing, are routinely read by major players in the publishing business. A piece on a high profile pop culture web site might get valuable notice as well. Sometimes, of course, you don’t know, and it’s a crapshoot.

But with the growing number of ways authors and other creators can reach and build an audience, I feel we should husband our talents and output and make sterner choices about how and where to release our material.

It’s better to get paid to play.

Announcements!:

- My friend Jessica Strawser, editor in chief of Writer’s Digest magazine, is going to be a debut hardcover novelist! She got a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press the other day, and wrote about it here. Congratulations on getting paid to play, good buddy!

- I heard from Nimrod Journal (speaking of prestigious literary journals) that they’re looking for submissions for an upcoming issue themed: Mirrors and Prisms: Writers of Marginalized Orientations and Gender Identities. Everything’s at this link: Nimrod

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Songs in the Key of Bang

We've all seen diagrams of the brain, the familiar frontal lobes, the cerebral cortex, the medulla oblongata, and so on. There's right brain for blowing bubbles in a meadow, there's left brain for doing your tax return, there's the place that's supposed to control your urge to kill, the place that makes you know when to double down on a pair of fours in blackjack, and the place that comes to life when you hear a champagne cork pop.

I just love that popping sound, not necessarily because it means something good to drink; I just like the sound. I like the rhythm of train wheels, too, and the buzz of the beans in the coffee grinder. I play the drums in a couple of symphony orchestras here in Florida (Tampa Bay Symphony and the South Shore Symphony Orchestra, both of which have concerts upcoming), and I guess that means the percussion zone of my brain has crowded out other, more useful zones, like the one about doubling down.

A clarinet was in the closet at home when I was ten, so I started on that. But I soon yearned to play the drums. Expressing a desire to change instruments, however, would have shown weakness of mind. Also, Girls Didn't Play Drums, and the ones who did had to endure constant questions as to whether they really were a girl or not. If you were a true girl, you played the flute or clarinet.

In college marching band I played saxophone but made friends with burnout drummers and, when the season was over, became one of them. Under their pot-smoke-impregnated wings, I learned that halfhearted drum playing earns you a spot in the toilet of public opinion, while playing drums with concern and heart earns you nothing. But while you're doing it, you feel like you're on the summit of Everest.

And that's the key: to go into any arena and look for the thing that inspires you most.

Playing percussion, I learned you don't just hit it; you play with taste, you listen to the ensemble, and you acknowledge your place in the back row as coolest of the cool.

A trumpet player once said to me, "You must have nerves of steel to play the cymbals." And it's true. You know the old saying, "If you're going to make a mistake, make a big one"? Well, you get your chance if you're on cymbals. Unlike the violin, where you can look at nine other people playing the same thing and go, "Oh, yeah, I'm lost right now, but I'll come in when they do," there's nobody else poised to strike those two heavy spun brass plates, whether fortissimo or quad-piano. You've got to be ready, and do it.

Over time, I've felt more and more driven to simply show up and serve the music.

What inspires you?

[Photo of stick tray by ES.]

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