Category: Family

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Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

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So this thought hit me while I was making the bed

I caught a blip from the news that a children’s show has recently added a non-binary character.

For some reason I flashed to my childhood, watching Looney Tunes, and Hannah Barbera cartoons. Nowadays, Looney Tunes is too violent so children must be protected. GI-Joe and Transformers were sponsored by Hasbro.

Sometime in the late 70s or 80s there was parental uproar over children’s cartoons because they were sponsored by folks like General Mills and Post. The cartoons were marketing sugary cereals to children’s every Saturday Morning.

Hasbro nakedly used cartoons to market transformers and GI-Joe toys to boys. Mattel peppered The Bugs Bunny / Roadrunner Hour with Barbie, Malibu Barbie, and a ton of other toy ads.

Generally speaking the Parents, and FCC came to the conclusion that using cartoons to focus marketing to children was probably not a good thing and enacted some controls. Around the same time, Parents became aware of a growing phenomenon called Anime. Typically Anime characters have exaggerated features, particularly the female characters.

Female Anime characters tend to have exaggerated breasts, hips, and often have very caucasian features. They are also scantily clad, or depicted in skin tight outfits where their breasts are barely contained. Anime shows and movies are not for children, they’re for adults or young adults. Teen boys in particular were getting very interested in Anime. If you’re old enough you might remember Heavy Metal… Anime art is much more detailed.

A great example is Ghost in the Shell. There are some really racy images and it makes sense that Teenage boys would have been very interested. Especially prior to the internet.

At the time boys had National Geographic, the Sears Catalog, perhaps they’d sometimes find their dad’s Playboy, or Penthouse magazines and “just read the articles”. Where else was a read blooded American Boy supposed to go to see partially clothed members of the opposite sex?

Concerned parents… Actually known as prudish American women took action with Anime too. OH NOPE! My Son is not going to be a horn dog like his father!!!!

Secretly, some Fathers would rent VHS tapes and share them with their sons. Hyper-Realistic Animation is an amazing art form. I said it… I’m standing by it!

All of this flashed through my head when I heard that a kids show was including a non-binary character.

What I thought was, “I’ll bet a lot of Americans are wishing for the simplicity of just marketing Lucky Charms, Trix, GI-Joes, & Barbies right about now…”

If I were a parent now, I’d have ripped the TV out of the house. I’d have a nice monitor where we’d stream movies or plug in DVD’s and watch things as a family. Our internet would be locked down. (Except for a few dirty sites that I’d vetted for my son(s) to “discover” when they were old enough.) I’d be spending at least 2 or 3 hours a week making sure that inappropriate sites were always locked out even if they changed weekly.

I’d be looking at what sites my kids went to for their school work. I’d be paying attention and if my kids school started teaching all this woke bullshit, I’d be trying to figure out how to do homeschooling.

My children would be able to decide for themselves how their sexuality would play out. They wouldn’t be told by teachers what they were supposed to think or feel about how or with whom they wanted to express their sexuality.

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I was going to start this with the old…

… This is your brain on drugs photo. If you’re old enough, you’d remember the eggs in the frying pan.

As I was looking for an easy image to pull, (because I don’t feel like fried eggs for breakfast,) I ran across a lot of images of brains, and brain related memes.

Ironically more than a few of those “informative” images, were suspect or had typos.

This one for example, has both concerns. I think the average human brain is perhaps 1/3 larger than the image asserts and there’s the old To, Too, Two, bugaboo. I’m going to ignore capitalization and sentence structure.

According to a quick internet search, (we all know how accurate that’s likely to be,) The average human brain weighs in, at about 3 lbs. It has a volume of 1260 cm3. Another interesting thing to note is that the human brain contains approximately 40% fat.

I suppose that means I shouldn’t have been offended when someone called me a fathead.

All of this about brains started because as I’ve moved through the grieving process, I’ve noticed things that disturb the hell out of me. I can’t remember SHIT! I write stuff down, or I put it into my phone and then forget to check my list.

I didn’t used to have this problem. I remembered everything, and found the act of writing things down to be a waste of time because I remembered everything I needed to do.

Now, I can’t stay focused, or on task. Everything is monumentally difficult, even the things I like doing. I’ve also noticed that I feel like I’ve lost myself, and am lost. I don’t “Feel” like myself right now. I’m easily bored and far too easily annoyed by the simplest of things.

People have said that this will pass. I can feel the truth of that statement. Simultaneously, I sense another truth as well. The hurt will diminish, (and has,) but I will never be the same person I was. I will be irrevocably changed. Things that I used to enjoy, I may leave behind because those things remind me of who I was with my other half, and it is too painful.

It’s in your other half’s absence that you are confronted with constant reminders of how much you were loved. You also have to confront how much you took that love and care for granted. There’s an element of guilt in that last bit. I don’t think guilt is the right emotion because if the roles were reversed, the feelings would be the same.

Moving on is hard. I haven’t done as good a job at it as I thought I would. I feel ashamed about that. I’ve been told not to beat myself up over it. I try not to, but I still feel ashamed.

I thought I was prepared. I thought it would be a quick searing pain and then it would be done. I was wrong. The pain lingers on. I think that’s a lyric from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I don’t remember the exact track.

I understand now why many societies have a minimum period for the grieving process. None of these societies have the process written in stone but many have social constructs that determine appropriateness of various behavior during this time.

As an intelligent species with millennia of lived experience behind us, various social fabrics have been woven to accommodate and protect those of us wounded by loss. Make no mistake, it’s a gaping festering emotional wound. It may be a wound that scars over but is always felt. My thinking along these lines allowed me to feel a connectedness that is very human, and was strangely comforting.

July and August have been very hard months for me. I’ve burned a lot of energy trying to process why. His birthday, my Birthday, my Father’s Birthday, the anniversary of my Father’s death, this was typically the time that my other half and I would do things together because he was off work. Which meant he wasn’t running from thing to thing 7 days a week.

In years past we’d take short trips, go to museums, wine tasting, or if it was really hot, we’d content ourselves to walk the dog or dogs here in the mountains where it was cool and beautiful.

In really good years, I’d have sucked enough cock and kissed enough ass at my employer that I could actually take my paltry week of vacation. Most of the time though, “Business Needs” prevented me having anything but weekends off. (Business needs usually meant that the boss was taking 3 weeks off in Cancun with his family or mistress and fuck everyone else!)

School would have started by now and my other half would be getting into the swing of the school year plus preparing for the holiday services at the church and temple.

This hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday while I was making a meatloaf. Laugh if you wish, it is funny. I think it’s the mundane nature of what I was doing.

For a few minutes I forgot he was gone. I looked at the clock on the stove and thought, “I’ll get this cooked and walk the dog before he gets home then make a nice summer salad and sweet corn for dinner, the weather is nice enough that we could perhaps eat on the deck tonight,”

Then I saw his car in the driveway where I’d parked it, and it all crashed in on me again, he’s gone and he’s not coming back.

I think the dog is getting tired of comforting me…

Perhaps not, he doesn’t seem to care as long I cuddle him back. Then he does the only thing he knows as a “Fixes Everything,” he’ll keep bringing me balls until I pick one to throw for him. Apparently fetching a ball is the puppy cure-all that ails you.

It actually works. I think it’s his tenacity, he’ll bring each ball in, drop it at my feet or in my lap and wait for a response. The response he’s looking for is a smile, or for me to grab the ball. At that point his tail starts wagging and he heads for the door. All is well again…

The point of this rambling train of thought is;
Life is Change
Change is sometimes painful
Love is beautiful, terrible, painful, and joyous. Above all, those we love and who love us back are never forgotten, because they’ve literally gotten into our head.
The pain we feel when grieving is real, and I think caused by suddenly finding familiar pathways in our heads non-functional.

Hell, it could even be endorphin withdrawal. When we see a loved one we get a hit and when we don’t see them anymore we have to go cold turkey.

There are probably thousands of too tightly wrapped Phds, MDs, and whatever else the educational system has turned out that will vehemently disagree with my assessment. Go ahead! I never claimed I was an expert, I’d bet however that I’m a damn sight closer to being an expert than any of those so called “Experts” because I’m living through this time, it’s my lived experience. (See what I mean? I’m almost as edgy and easily pissed off as Biden, or my Mom these days.)

I need an endorphin hit. Maybe I’ll go buy myself a birthday present or two. I think I’ll try the built-in method of getting that endorphin hit before I go out and spend money. I suspect however that I’m going to be shopping in the next day or two.

Maybe it’s time for a haircut, a massage, and some time spent caring for myself and saying the hell with responsible behavior (within limits…)

Yeah, I’m working through a lot of shit that I am ill equipped to handle.