This blog is so neat and uncluttered. I love looking at it because it gives me a break from my actual life.
You know things are gyrating out of control when robots start calling you on the phone. Yesterday I got a "courtesy call" from my insurance company. I like how they finesse a collections call by calling it a "courtesy call." I also got a call from Verizon and another one from National Grid. But I called back National Grid and to my astonishment they told me my account was not overdue. So I guess they were just being neighborly.
So before I go back to San Diego in -- yikes! -- just a few days to see Leonard Pennario, I have to clean up my finances, which are not pretty.
But you know what's funny?
When I look ahead to my week in San Diego, I tend completely to forget that I have to work on this book. Yesterday I was lounging at my desk, my chin in my hand, thinking about visiting the Art Museum. Maybe Leonard could go with me. I could show him "I Remember Being Initiated Into the Frat" and then we could have lunch in the museum cafe and talk about George Bellows. I am sure Leonard knows about him. He knows about everything. And then we could look at the park. I didn't see much of Balboa Park last winter when I was in San Diego. I was too busy working.
My daydream continued. I could go back to this clothes store called Ross that I liked. Ross is like Marshall's, only cheaper and more fun and the sound system is not always squalling "Never ever ever pay full price!" right in your ear. The Marshall's stores in San Diego are better than they are here, too. I should go there. And that Supercuts, that gave me that great haircut, I should stop in there. I should check out La Jolla more. I should walk on the beach.
La la la la la la la.
Then I think: Wait, I'm going to be there only a week. And I have this book to do!
What I want to do on this visit is go over what I have written so far with Pennario, and see if he likes how it is going, and also I am hoping that the research I have done back here in Buffalo will bring up memories that didn't surface before. Yesterday I read an L.A. Times review in which the critic said Pennario had done music an incredible favor by discovering and performing the 1952 sonata of Alberto Ginastera, the Argentinian composer. "Why pianists have so long overlooked this brilliant work is a mystery," the critic wrote.
What a funny world this is! I just heard that sonata the other night at Holy Trinity Lutheran when Gabriela Montero played it! I wonder if she knows she owes such a great artistic debt to Leonard Pennario. As does every pianist.
I will have to ask Pennario about that Ginastera sonata.
After I walk on the beach.
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