Musing Interruptus

Hello and welcome. Thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. I’m Renée Valentina and this is Musing Interruptus, a podcast meant for sharing thoughts, stories, enjoying idiomatic phrases and words in general. You can read along, the transcription is in the description of this episode. The idiomatic phrases are in italics. Try to get the meaning from the context and then look them up to see if you were right. If you like it, share it, but more importantly, continue the conversation.

Picture this, a rectangular box that fits in your hand, covered in plastic. Pull the little tab that excises the top protective plastic covering off the box. Now you can flip the top of the foil cigarette box open, the first smell of tobacco overtakes me. I pull out one of the little paper tubes of tobacco, putting the filter side to my soft lips between my index and middle fingers, with my other hand, I strike the lighter and make fire, pulling the flame closer to my face, pulling in everything that makes the world ok for that moment and that moment alone. I’ve breathed in fire and smoke and released dopamine in my brain. I did this over and over again, daily, several times a day… in many, many places. You could say, I know something about it.

Our first week in 2023, so far so good. Promises may have been made on New Year's Eve, as it is not only a night for partying, you might have made resolutions and wishes. Now we have to get them done. Sometimes they imply breaking cycles, correcting bad habits, addictions. Sticky, tricky, addictions. You might want to quit smoking, get out of a bad relationship, start a project, get fit, find a different job, make a new friend, or learn something new. If you think about it, as long as you have air in your lungs, you can build towards what you want. Air is the operative word today.

I am reminded of when I wanted to quit smoking. Let me rephrase that, I had to quit because I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was at a crossroads, live or die, it was up to me. By the way, that is not always the case. This was truly a special moment, as life gave me a glimpse into the future, is this the death I wanted for myself? I have a whole other Musing Interruptus for that one… bear with me. The hospital had a world-renowned program to help in the process. I did it because I thought I would have access to better doctors, I never had the intention of actually quitting. Two weeks before the program, I quit smoking, and my plan was to pick it up again when I felt better. That was 9 years ago and I haven’t had a cigarette since. You could say I quit cold turkey, because I just did it. However, the program is what really did it for me. They educated me on my brain chemistry and laid out strategies to deal with withdrawal syndrome. Honestly, not being able to fill my lungs was enough for me. That was scary. I did the program with and older gentleman who pulled an oxygen tank around, he was doing the program so he could kiss his daughters before he passed. He didn’t want his last kisses to be stinky. He was in the final stages of emphysema. Another participant, maybe 15 years my senior, a man set in his ways, vociferating he had absolutely no way of changing his habits or routines (this was a recommendation, alter the order in which you do things). As I heard him say it was impossible, I noticed my own inflexibility cheering they guy on, left fist in the air. No, I won’t change! This works for me you stupid motherfuckers! My insides were going all John McClane on me. Cont. Reading

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus. Thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. What a year. That was rough.  I catch myself saying, that is a me problem. I am always surprised when someone says, no, that is a we problem. Unexpected softness. We all know how rough it can get. Being fortunate doesn’t just mean enjoying the good things, it also means having the ability to see the softer part. The one brought by people who give a little more kindness, sometimes it is time, others it is resources. It can be our turn to be the softness, others, we are fortunate enough to be embraced. With a little help from my friends, said the Beatles and even better sung by Joe Cocker (I am open to that discussion). Today I got the best and worst news and decided to change everything I was writing. You didn’t need to know that, but I’m telling you. Tis the season to remember: it is ok to change your mind, to say you are sorry, to improve and do better. I don’t know if this was  better than what I wrote in the morning, but here goes nothing:

Impasse. Finality. Time is invented and relative and a river and we are fish in that river. If you are Doc Brown and Marty Mcfly, you move around time.

Impasse. There is no moving forward from an impasse. We don’t use it to talk about the passing of time, seconds, minutes, years, decades. We use that word to describe an issue or position in a negotiation where there is no wiggle room. I’m sure there are cases where this is an absolute. There is no negotiating certain positions, no matter how good a teacher, negotiator, orator or storyteller. Time passes and so do people. That was the bad news today. Today of all days. You can’t negotiate with death.

Sometimes there are issues that feel like an impasse. In negotiation we teach strategies, speak of perspective, understanding the other side’s positions, needs, interests. Looking at the metaphorical pie, making it bigger. Perspective is a great thing. I believe most anything can be negotiated. Death and time are not such things. Two reminders that courage and a lust for life need to be nurtured. That is life and death.

Reaching the end of the year is not always a time for ecstatic celebration. Time is relentless, we are in motion, we lose, we mourn, the best or maybe the worst, our bodies have memory. You can remember what your lover made you feel a year ago, two years ago because your body remembers. That song on the radio might take you back to a moment you thought long gone, but your body remembers. It wasn’t your brain giving you the memory  per se, it was your body who remembered, then you got the memory image. Last year’s loss is not easy. This year’s losses might leave you not really wanting to celebrate. That is ok. Hear me out, if you are feeling this way, lets make it a we problem, if you don’t like my perspective, you can throw it out. If you do… tell me. Ok…. to the point and in a nutshell… Cont. Reading

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus, thank you for clicking, and thank you for listening. I’m Renée Valentina and this is my podcast. I write this for my students, my friends, and basically anyone who would like to continue the conversation. You can listen and read along. The link to the transcript is in the description of the episode.  I’ve been thinking about the fish and the bird that fall in love. In the musical, Fiddler on the Roof, the question is, where would they build a home? My little heart wonders, what does that matter, if they found each other and the path that led them to fall in love? Half of the battle is won.

I’ve noticed my proclivity for Twitter accounts that tweet about lusting and pining over an unrequited love, a love that has been torn away from them, or a love, so silent, only thousands of followers know it exists, yet the identities are in the shadows, anonymous. I’m hooked. I devour the little tweets, imagining the stories, fantasizing, and resolving them so they can be together. It is not all fun and games. As I am generally confronted with the question: if it were real love, why wouldn’t they be together? What is the point of declaring everlasting love or lust and not going for it? The truth is, building is hard and unromantic at times, at least in the mainstream romantic comedy sense. But I digress… today I am not for understanding the realities behind unrequited love or the appeal of platonic love. I’m interested in the fools that believe they can make it work, the fools that step out, from behind anonymity. Today, I want to talk about the fish and the bird who were faced with having to find a home because they fell in love.

The little fish, or in Tom Wait’s version, a whale, falls in love with a bird. Perhaps they met online or on a singles cruise. I can totally see their types putting themselves out there, taking the risk of meeting the psychos, weirdos, and creeps, with the hope of finding a diamond, a special someone who will squench their heart and stay around the next morning, and the morning after that. They are the type that never stopped believing in love, they never gave up. The singers of Morrisey songs and puckers of petals and blowers of dandelions, making wishes, gazing at the moon or the sky or through windows. They were looking, open and waiting for lighting to strike, and they found each other.  A counterpart in love. Once they saw each other, they just knew everything that came after would be noticed as just that, their own personal watershed moment.

Although their families never understood, the bird and the fish laughed the hours away, kissed to their delight and traveled by air and sea. They stopped at every port, caught rides on boats, and enjoyed the wind, each in their own way. They had so much in common, their love of the moon and worms, for instance. They never had trouble picking out what to eat nor where to travel. The looked at each other with such admiration. The fish adored to watch his love fly, glide in the air, to the moon and back. She flew for both, with all her might, she would swish and dive, delighting her love, her fish. She, in turn, would watch her beloved fish, swim around the moon, through it, and to the depths where all the moon’s secrets were kept.  The fish would exclaim, my darling, I swim and feel you with me, even at the distance. My darling bird, I slice the water, and the thought of you makes my two-ventricle heart beat softer and faster, all at the same time. You are my first thought in the morning,.. Continue Reading

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus. Thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. I’m Renée Valentina and this is my podcast. I write this for my students, my friends, and anyone who would like to listen to silly diatribes about life and my imagination, and maybe even chime in. I love when you answer my questions and express what you think about different situations. If you have me in the background or maybe take a walk or drive with me while you listen, it’s all good. If you think someone else would like to listen, please share. Today, some idiomatic phrases that have to do with having a bad day, if you read along, you’ll see them in italics. Try to get their meanings from the context and then look them up online to see if you were right. About this episode, any resemblance with reality is completely intentional, the rest is purely fiction, for dramatic effect, I promise.

My intuition is very good. Witch like even. I knew Thursday night that I would be getting up on the wrong side of the bed on Friday morning. After sleeping four hours, I got up, took a shower, and made breakfast, a really good one. The omelets were perfect and had little pieces of bacon and just the right amount of cheese. I would have breakfast after our morning errand. For a moment, I thought, my intuition was so wrong, perfect, fluffy omelets don’t happen on bad days. I would be chauffeuring and offering moral support to my sister that morning. — She is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world. So, we drove to the old neighborhood, where, strangely, I wasn’t asked for my id, which goes against their security protocol, which I’d never been exempt from. Seems like a tiny stroke of luck. We picked up a friend and off we went, again, leaving the old neighborhood without even a peep from the guards.

On the way to our destination, I was thinking about how well I was driving and how I would not get stressed out with the drivers that seemed to be having awful days. They probably didn’t have perfectly fluffy omelets, with little bacon bits and the just right amount of cheese. It is understandable and I wasn’t going to make their day worse. As we arrived, I found the perfect parking space and waited for my sister and our friend. It took them some time, so I drank my coffee and listened to my favorite songs on Spotify, had myself a think, and looked at the time. Listened to more music and wondered about the nearest bathroom and thought I would be better off waiting till I got home. Against my better judgment, I had a few more sips of coffee. Some time later, they were out, our friend called an uber and made his way to his next appointment and we got in the car. I had had the perfect song for my sister and the moment, it would play automatically as soon as I turned the ignition key. It was set up to make a flawless, magical memory. - tac tac tac tac tac tac, my heart skipped a beat and I saw the lights on the dashboard flicker. —No. Again. Give it gas. Check it’s in park. I turn the key again— tac tac tac tac tac tac tac. — No! I know what that is, it’s the battery. I try again, stupidly, and reminding myself of the saying, it is crazy to repeat something under the same circumstances expecting to get a different result. I call my husband while my sister is telling me to just call an uber and leave her to take care of the problem. Now, I didn’t just have to use the bathroom, I had to get to a doctor’s appointment that would be pushed three months if I missed it. I had to do this. But I also had to make sure the car was taken care of and my sister got to her next appointment (moving to her new house). Continue Reading

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus. Thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. I think it is safe to say, it is time to put up the Christmas tree. While some say that it should happen around the first week of December, I say, why? - Just, why?

Well, you’ve caught me, I’m not the most Christmassy of folks. I won’t go into it, I’ll just say, there are more of us, and I’ll speak for myself, I won’t get in the way of your Christmas cheer, just don’t touch me with it.

You might not celebrate Christmas on account of having other celebrations, Krampus Nacht was on December 5th (if you are still around, this is a confirmation you were good this year, if you aren’t listening to this, you might be in the underworld because you were naughty);  you might be in the middle of Hanukkah, Santa Lucía is in a couple of days, Yule and December Solstice are coming up, Kwanza, and New Year’s. There are lots of last month of the year celebrations. At their core, there are nice feelings and motivations to be good humans around this time of year. I totally respect your celebrations. As a show of goodwill toward you, I will talk about a few things my family likes doing around this time of year and that I don’t interfere with, much.

They celebrate Christmas.  They take out the ornaments and decorations from the boxes at the very back of the storage space. This is the part I call, fun with old dusty colorful things that will collect more dust and make cleaning the house a trying experience. They buy a Christmas tree or Christmas corps. I get the whole, it smells so good thing, but to me, it is the same as putting a butterfly in a cage. Looks pretty for a while, but in the end, you get a dead butterfly. That makes me sad, not happy. But as I said, I won’t interfere much. If you want a tree, that is fine. My family buys a tree, they strap it on the roof of the car, tie it here and there to make sure it doesn’t fly away on their way home. You know what else people strap on the roof of their cars and drive home?... anyway when they get home, fun with little needles that clog up the vacuum cleaner begins. So now they have made a mess of the house, with the pine needles, the ornaments, and other decorations, just strewn about while they find the right place to hang the stockings (those are the big socks Santa puts the little presents in), if you have a fireplace, you hang them there, if you don’t, you hang them where you always hang your dirty socks. I might hang my sports bra after yoga and a bike ride, just to make it a little more festive. Smelly you say? Don’t forget, this time of year is about the senses, what would it be without Christmas odors and music?

My family plays Christmas carols and ballads, there is even rock. There is a John Denver and the Muppets Cd, and there is another with John Lennon and Springsteen, which is not too bad. I don’t cover my ears when they play that music. I just stay out of the way of putting up the tree. First, they affix it in a base with water and cover that with a skirt, like in nature. Then, they wrap the Christmas tree lights, which blink and may or may not cause epilepsy or a fire. I like the optimism my family has when it comes to safety, plug something in that is sitting in water and you will continue to water until it is very dead and we have to Mary Jane’s Last Dance it (this is a reference to a Tom Petty and The Heart Breakers video from the 90s that made a huge impression on me)... continue reading

Hello, welcome to Musing Interruptus, thank you for clicking and thank you for listening.  I did the Spotify wrapped for podcasters and was humbled and surprised. You are out there, listening, there are people who I don’t know and people who I do know. Thank you for subscribing.  But specially, thank you for continuing the conversation. Since April 30th, 2021, I’ve written and podcasted 72 episodes, and been on the other side of countless conversations. That is what it is all about, I love when you tell me what you think or wonder. You can send me messages via anchor, my Instagram @lucidnomadenglish (and watch the reels I make for these podcasts, I’m really proud of them), on Twitter @lucidnomadeng or Facebook, if you still do that :D at Lucid Communication Academy.  Thank you.  Let’s do number forty-six for 2022. Pull up a seat, do you have a cup of tea, mate or coffee? Maybe you are on your way for a walk.  Today, I start off with a question, right off the bat, just like that! What do you listen to when it hurts?

Knowing what to, how to take care of your emotional self is not always readily available.

You might be surviving the passing of a loved one, losing a job, losing love, a home, the idea and expectation of a love affair. Maybe it is bad news at the doctor’s office or failed project. Knowing what to do requires clarity, what a thing, sometimes feelings are so intense and aggressive that thinking isn’t the intuitive option or even at hand. For others, hubris (arrogance) outweighs their own humanity, shoving and repressing feelings way down.

I’ve heard two big schools of thought on this, one is let it hurt and the other is try not to think much about it. I’ll start with the latter.

There are things that need to get done. Wash the windows and take out the trash. Keep busy, get through your inbox, and go to the grocery store. Exercise, keep it up. Don’t stop. Deadlines keep coming and the world won’t wait for anyone. FOMO or fear of missing out might push you to continue, or simply the fear of being overwhelmed and struck down by the emotional pain associated with a series of events or processes is enough to just keep going.

In this case, listen to the music that will build you up, bring up the fight song that makes your insides burn, focusing all your energy on the task at hand. Give it your all. That sadness inside feels like it can be transformed. You believe it and envision coming out on the other side of whatever fuckery this is. Just push through this, don’t look back. Play the song again, don’t let go of the phrase that fuels you, and let the melody and when the music drops become the tunnel through which you make it through. You are rough, you can withstand this you have been doing it for years. An expert in your own right. This is on you, and nobody is coming to save you. You know this. The music is just one of the many tools you have to get it done and never look back.

I get that. I have no rebuttal. Just know, there is some unnecessary roughness there you might want to reconsider. You can’t hold on to nothing. The way I see it, acceptance results in real strength. Facing the emotional distress, therein lies a test of valor. A life obstacle. It is life. Continue Reading. 

Welcome to Musing Interruptus. Storytime. You may not know this, but our dear Lorena once had herself a dear John, destination is more than decreed in the phrasing. Before they met, a few things had to happen. Some transformative. The kind of things that leave the soul heavier. Today, it is all about John.

John never gets to play. His one-track mind puts off any kind of real enjoyment until he has finished his work to his satisfaction. Satisfaction was never easy to come by.

His one-track mind, destination cogville… mmmmm you know what, he wouldn’t get the reference to the cogs from Chaplin’s Modern Times because he was never allowed to watch movies, and he never found the need to scrutinize that. Childhood was about chores, school, homework, and being the emotional support, his mother needed. He never quite fit the bill. Textbook. Even after his mother’s passing, he couldn’t fathom a different life for himself. Survival mode was the only speed he knew how to keep.

Daily grind was nothing to him, scratch that, it provided structure, and that comforted him. However, there was no joy. Not in his morning coffee, much less in the bowl of soggy cereal he shoveled into his mouth before work. It never occurred to him to change his schedule or habits. God forbid he would miss a beat. He kept time as a function of what was expected of him. He nourished himself, as expected, as was indicated. Compliance with life. He was great at that. That didn’t cause him pleasure either.

Imagine love, it was never on the to-do list. Life had proffered up a series of meet-cutes he brushed-off, not even recognizing an opportunity. You need to to show yourself love before you can love. What did that even look like? He never considered anything was missing.  Had he not been on the 5 o’clock bus that Tuesday, he wouldn’t have overheard the conversation about music that would set his life a blaze. A child was describing the instruments and sounds in a song he was learning at school. He seemed to get lost in words like staccatos, high, low, sustain. It was John getting lost in the words. He had never paid attention to the radio, much less street musicians. All sounds, up to that moment, had been part of a great wall of noise, each part indistinguishable from the next. He experienced life that way, having to face a wall of noise that included requests, demands, and some of his basic needs. Was it the hum from the bus’s engine that let him relax and listen in on this child’s description to his mother? Was it the vision of a reality he would have loved for himself? It would have been nice. Whatever it was, he shot up and rang the bell signaling the bus driver to let him off at the next stop. To potentially experience, that was more than enough. Call it serendipity, but there was a record store at the corner, known for its eccentric owner. If you let him, he would be your spiritual guide into awakening that soul-searching eye through music. John would be in the right hands.

Today, he would discover a part of his brain and self, accessed only with the resources music provides to understand the world on a sensorial plane, one in which souls connect over waves and descriptions that become seared into your soul. Continue Reading

Elasticity took over the house. Walls elongated and shrunk. Music had a new quality to it, a deepness and hollowness all at the same time.  —Hey man, he called out to his friend, I can feel my blood pressure going down. Or is it up? My heart speeds up a bit, then I notice it and I get a little lightheaded. –Dude, answered Jack, What the hell are you talking about? It’s time for Musing Interruptus.

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus. Thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. There is nothing like an oh-no moment after sending a message. Either because it can be misunderstood or because you have a lapsus, you didn’t mean to write that or you were under the influence and thought it was a good idea at the time. This has happened to me. Several times. Including, texting the precise person I was not supposed to the -remember we are not supposed to tell you this- message. Mind you, this happened before covid, so I can’t blame it on covid long term effects. The thing is, the unconscious will have its way, one way or another. That can mean blurting things out or miscommunicating. I mean, not for your unconscious, your unconscious meant to do it, it is you, the unenlightened fool who is trying so hard to repress it, engaging in a tug-o-war like struggle with the other part of yourself, that is as free and expansive as possible. That is a recipe for disaster or freedom, depends on who ask. I think as we age, the repressor gets weak, and succumbs more and more to the freer one… you know… the ID.

Why are we so afraid of the ID in society? Granted, limits must exist. That is not up for discussion. Responsibility should not be understood as the counterpart of freedom. On the contrary, complying with responsibility frees up space. Emotional space.

Anyhoooooow, texting after thirty can be challenging. Take for instance those funny little faces and stickers. I’ve seen people struggle with the meaning of emoticons. Can we just all agree to disagree and explain everything with words which, by the way, can also be misunderstood for reasons of basic sentence construction, a hiccup with subject verb agreement, split infinitives, punctuation, and not following a general line of thought. Case in point, exhibit A. this podcast. But I was talking about erring on the opposite side of interpretation via selection of words to express ideas and feelings. I’m not saying get rid of emoticons all together, but maybe they don’t substitute the written word. Emoticons, stickers, gifs, they are all great, nifty, even, but they are the equivalent of a child making faces and having the parents guess what they are feeling or need. —Wait, wait, wait, dude… interjected Jack, but talking about your feelings is hard. It makes me feel weak inside.     Ok, so you have a point there, but it’s not reason enough not to speak your mind. Once you learn how to articulate your feelings, you can identify what you want and assertively ask for it. It’s that simple. Continue reading

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus. Today, a tale as old as time. The monster under the bed. Talk about strange bedfellows. Be forewarned.

When I was born, my monster was born. Sleeping under my crib and then under my bed. When the space under the bed was too tight, my monster moved to the closet. We grew up together. When I learned to read, he demanded I read him bedtime stories, demanded cookies and dry cinnamon toast crunch cereal. My monster never understood I didn’t choose to be born at the same time he was. I couldn't break it to him. As I grew, he watched me learn and dream, waiting patiently for me after school, watching me play outside with my friends, sometimes alone. After all, he had come to be when I arrived home from the hospital. The tiny monster under my crib, pacing like a little velociraptor, practicing his growl. Little did he know that he would not be frightening me, but frightening those who came to scare me. He was my protector. Seems he missed induction to monsters under the bed or maybe he went into the guardian angel course by mistake.

My monster fiercely defended me from the grumbles coming up from the first floor. He was so brave, never faltering, never blinking in the face of the hurricanes. Those high-speed winds could turn the house upside down, but my monster always kept us right side up. Amazing, he was always my age, no matter what age, and he knew how to take the most appropriate form. Whatever the case called for, he could shape-shift into a shadow, a hug, a shield, the voice in my head that reminded me I was not alone, my knight, never errant, my constant friend and playmate, battling the horrors cloaked by the dark. My philosophy teacher, as I was forced to explain life, God, and loss to him. I was scared of things hiding under the stairs, wanting to grab my feet, pull me through the rise between steps on the staircase. I wonder now what I was really afraid of. Was it really the aliens living under the stairs or behind the refrigerator? Was it the miracle of make-believe?

Life changes on a dime. I was afraid my monster was left behind when we moved so urgently. So much was left behind. I was still so young. I needed my monster close to me. Especially back then. There would be no house, no bed to dive into, to sob and wail after an injustice and hurt feelings, ever again. At least if I had my monster, I would feel protected. I couldn’t imagine the sadness of my monster, waiting in that empty house. Roaming around, making the floorboards creek, sleeping in the empty closet, pushing himself down the stairs, belly-down, feet first. Our things, you know? Would he be poking his head out the window, wondering what time I would be back? How many bedtime stories had he missed out on? Who would bring him cereal?  How many scary things had happened, he could have protected me from? If I was feeling the hole in my chest, I’m sure he was feeling it too. This is the only connection I never questioned. Continue Reading

Hello and welcome to Musing Interruptus. Thank you for clicking and thank you for listening. We are all about the harvest season. The hard work that was done all year should provide sustenance. Oh dearest, it is possible it hasn’t, crops can be damaged, livelihoods ruined. A sentence versed in games of probability. Live or die, others will go on. That is designed perfectly. It is a requirement, and it is crucial. Is what I would say if today’s topic were a total downer! But it is not! Today on Musing Interruptus, each person in our life is an instrument that brings notes to our lives, writes songs, creates compositions, accompanying our brilliant moments and when we are lucky, our lowest, dullest, less colorful moments. Some people create full songs on our shared soundtracks, others chime in with a tune or melody. When all of it has been said and done, music is made, and it bounces off the walls. By the way, off-the-wall also means unusual or strange. So, go with it, and then let me know what you think. You know the drill.

It starts out in the womb, where there is a fine duet between a heart that discovers another, in its own ecosystem. Call it magic, the baseline for music or plain life. Percussion is in all of us. The dyad turned duet turned family of individuals. Each person hones their instrument, discovers their notes and tempos. It takes time to create music, the sounds are there from the very first moment. Sounds are vibrations. Colors vibrate too, did you know that? They are a chemical reaction. But that is another Musing Interruptus, not this one. This one is rooted in the core of our origin, linked to generations going both ways. Unless they are not. Which can also occur.

Each person in the family plays a part of a piece of music, a composition unique to the walls that housed them, or should I say homed? Masterful, at times harsh, others whatever the sound of home is. The music we make is as harmonious or eclectic as the personality of each member, each instrument, playing the notes that tell the story of what is happening, that accompany moments or intervene and embrace, sustain. We play the notes that come to us, we play the notes that are most familiar to our hearts and minds. The dark heavy notes, full and ominous, and at times vexing. The kind that gives you a foreboding feeling which is not so great but makes sense as the base of the composition, keeping time and keeping the sound grounded. How about sunny notes, that need to be played staccato, that announce light, beaming, joyous harmony, jumping off the staff. The energy that fuels laughter. Ah, but play the note flat, and you have the copy with less saturated colors. Not too sure they could strike out on their own as they are regarded as the compliment. In an impressively supportive role. Or could it be that the flat note is disruptive? Have I simply misunderstood flat notes, failing to see the beauty? It is very possible. Need a rest note? Silence, of course, is crucial to music and music appreciation. As well as appreciation of these relationships. A time to reflect and regroup, breathe and get ready to jam again. Continue Reading