Tea With Milk and Anchovies

You know what bugs me? Finicky people, particular people, perfectionist people. These are the people that stand at a little counter in a Starbuck’s after getting their decaf, half caf, cafe latte lotta and then start pampering it for 18 minutes while you’re standing behind them waiting to just put a little whole milk in your tea and be off. They have to open one packet very carefully then put it in the coffee mixture a little at a time and then stir and oops, they’ve spilt a little out on the counter, well, we have to clean it up, then go back and start over with the sugar but then this time add a little low-fat milk and then a little half-and-half, just a spot because then we have to stir and then we have to put a little more sugar, oops, some crystals on the counter, wipe, wipe, then stir, then a spot of milk and oh, can I get another cup and then they mix and stir some more, wipe…ad nauseum, ad linoleum. Hey I’m really happy you want a perfect cup of whatever java you have there but the rest of us just want to get on with our lives. While I’m standing there waiting for you to free up space so I can just put some milk in my tea, the stock market just crashed. In fact, World War V just started and ended believe it or not, and we’re still in Iraq, so go figure that one. Where’s Truman when you need him?

These are the same people that when you can actually find a retail sales person in a department store who is available and can ring up the overpriced blouse you decided to buy, will stand at the counter and ask a million questions about the blouse they’re buying causing a line to form where there once was just you, the next person, in line, then making the salesperson pick up the phone to have to call China to ask if the blouse is available in another color. Or they may have to make that call to the accounting department to see if this person has any money left to spend on a credit card and we all know how long that takes. Then this same person, while the salesperson is on the phone for them for the umpteenth time, will turn around, look at the blouse on the hanger in your hands and say, oh that’s nice, where did you get that? Then have the audacity to handle it in front of you like it’s theirs to fondle because after all you're just there to entertain them. Yeah, lady, don’t touch my blouse that I haven’t bought yet because I actually have good credit and can pay for it and I don’t need to call China to speak personally to some overworked, enslaved seamstress working for the new socialist communist regime flavor of the month. And I especially looked long and hard at the rack to try to find a blouse that looked like it hadn’t been touched by other greasy human hands or tried on by some other sweaty person who isn’t Paris Hilton and I picked this one precisely because it gives me the illusion that I won’t have to fumigate it before I wear it for the first time. Hey, this isn’t let’s all get chatty and friendly in line because we’re excited about shopping. Sorry, talk to the woman behind me because I’M NEXT!!

Now you could say, hey, get some patience, get some kindness, just wait your turn but no, it’s not about that at all. I am patient, I am kind, I do wait my turn but it gets a little ridiculous when you have people who are trying your patience and naturally predisposed kindness with their self-absorbed, time-consuming, little gyrations that don’t take into consideration that it’s a public place, meaning other people will also need to purchase, get service, be served or just generally need to move ahead, on and up and out.

Then there are those people who don’t eat anything and need to make adjustments to whatever it is they do eat. Please for the love of God, stay home and eat, forever. It’s just food. I don’t care what your religious, dietary, horrendous experience in a past life or bad childhood memory is of having whatever dish, meat, vegetable or mayo product there is on the menu. Pretty much you will die sooner in a car crash than eating 1000 more calories or be forcefed mushrooms or cilantro. Those people who have allergies to everything on the planet, carry apples with you please or some other sort of fruit that doesn’t make you break out in hives at the mention of some sauce or oil product that might get into your food.

Being Italian, I just can’t stomach these people. Italians pretty much eat anything and I enjoy even a good dish of anchovies and Italian bread once in awhile. I even like anchovies on pizza. I mean, bring it on, all of it. Life is a glorious adventure in food as far as I’m concerned and those people who barely dip their feet in their water with lemon can kiss my fanny.

I’m not even gonna talk about my days as a waitress except to say that outside of brazen laziness, one of the main reasons I picked restaurants with limited menus was the fact that none of these finicky people could mess with anything. What you saw was what you got: fajitas, burrito, steak. That’s it. Nothing fancy involved. And if you asked for a little adjustment, I gave you my best smile at the table and then cussed you under my breath as I rolled my eyes to go get your water with lemon. Yeah, bring your own lemons, eh? Bring your own bottle of lemon flavored seltzer. What do you think this is -- the Riviera?

Listen, I’m all for personal preferences. It’s not like I don’t have any myself but that’s why the world made home computers. And those numbered selections on business call lines. And Tuesdays.

All I ask is if you see me coming, make a little space so I can put milk in my tea and go on about my Tuesday or Wednesday. I may need to get to the store for more lemons.

ETUDE FOR ALBERT FILLMORE

I played the piano last night. I have three guitars, a piano, numerous songbooks and sheet music and I sing and I almost never make music anymore. I sing all the time but only to CDs or accapella around the house or car or office or shower. I plan every night and every weekend to start playing again but it seems I’d rather nap. Now, I have a play that I’m trying to put up and finish writing and workshopping and a lot of the second half is me dancing and singing and playing guitar and piano. Surprise, surprise, how did all that get in there? So I’m, in an indirect way, trying to psyche myself out to play again. Hey, I was a music major in college. Why would it be that hard?

I started playing piano when I was nine years old. My parents bought me a piano. I guess they could have taken a vacation but I got a piano. A nice upright from Story & Clark. I still have it. I dragged it across the country with me when I moved to California. It needs to be tuned desperately, poor thing. I took my first lessons with a woman who was infamous in the suburban area where I grew up for giving group lessons on 10 or more pianos with students doubled up on them and then giving these magnificent recitals with all these pianos playing at one time. It really was grand, pardon the pun, but she didn’t teach anything. I played the piano once for my voice teacher and she said, “Oh you’re a good faker.” I was self conscious about my playing ever since then. I, of course, played for family gatherings and I could play Christmas carols and pluck out the melodies and then play chords with my left hand but I couldn’t sight read, I never memorized anything and I didn’t know one rhythm from another. In short, I really was a pretty good faker. I only accompanied myself to practice my singing.

Then I got to college and declared a vocal performance major. Then the brilliant department head (literally, because he was bald on top) suggested I “have something to fall back on” and I declared a music education major in addition to vocal music which meant I had to learn how to play the piano. Great. So I had a host of further ridiculous piano teachers, one a nun, who kept me in the elementary books until I was so bored I threatened to lock us in the room and play all the stupid songs from the book until she acquiesced to teach me the intermediate modules. Okay, I didn’t do that and I’d probably be living a different life as an ex-parolee, but you sense my frustration. Those books are meant for children! I mean, where do they get these titles? “The Blue Guitar”, “Out In The Meadow”, “Sammy’s Left Hand”, “JuJuBees Rock”, “Girl With A Pearl Earring,” “Making A Left Turn In A Thunderbird,” you know, stuff like that. These little ditties all sounded the same. And they were not singable at all! No hooky melodies, nothing. Then in my senior year, the new department head (not bald at all but gray) decided she was going to take me on herself. So I learned how to “LLLLift! my wrist and take it down on the key! LLLifft and down.” What? I’m not playing Carnegie Hall lady, I need to learn the notes. No amount of fancy wrist strokes is going to make up for the fact I can’t sight read and I can’t play two hands at the same time. Ugh! What a waste of my parents’ hard earned dollars. At that point, I had been blacklisted in the music department anyway for deigning to study with a voice teacher that the music department hated personally and was jealous of professionally only because this voice teacher was the authentic article. Her students learned how to sing. This was two hands singing, this was sight reading, this was advanced study, professional work, not this crap I was being taught on piano. I knew a good thing when I saw it and I was ambitious (not like I am now, ready to drop everything to read a book at a moment’s notice). I want to study with her, I said. I graduated magna cum laude anyway with or without the blacklisting. Knuckleheads. Lift my wrists eh? If I saw ya today, I’d lift my fists.

All this is leading me to the plum, the golden egg, the piano teacher who made a difference and showed me everything about how to play the piano. Because of that, I grew in self-confidence personally and professionally. Up until I studied with this man, I lived in mortal fear of being asked to play the piano, especially in my elementary and junior high music classes. I couldn’t play the different harmony parts. I couldn’t sight read unless I was playing chords in the left hand. I could play the piano and it sounded good and I could still teach the music parts and vocal parts but I lived in fear of being found out as a “fake” as my long ago voice teacher said. Of course, I wasn’t a fake. I loved music, I knew it with my heart and soul. I knew things you couldn’t teach in college or in a classroom and that’s what I conveyed to my students. I even taught them how to dance! Music is movement isn’t it as well? It’s not just hey, this is 2/4 time and play that beat on the drum. Ugh, how boring! Curriculums! Who makes this stuff up? Do they actually teach it after they come up with it?! Sure, here’s 2/4 time and now let me show you what you can do with it!! That’s how you teach it!

So four or five years after graduation and a couple of music teacher jobs later, I decided to become an authentic piano student and I took private lessons at the Center for Creative Studies in downtown Detroit. His name was Albert Fillmore and he was a composer and musician as well as a teacher and he was well into his 70’s or even early 80’s back then, about 15 years ago. With Albert, I learned how to really play the piano and enjoy and love it. He didn’t use any of those silly graded books. He had me buy the pieces themselves, Mozart Sonatas, Bach Cantatas and Fugues, Debussy, Satie, Two-Part Inventions, Chopin! Oh I was playing Chopin Etudes! And I was using both hands and MEMORIZING the pieces. In fact, I had to memorize them as soon as I learned them, if not before. I had to work with a metronome practicing scales every day. The pieces themselves were advanced levels if not the original pieces written as they were meant to be played. For Christmas one year, he gave me a card he made himself with a composition for a verse. I had to play it for him. I still have it on my piano. That man taught me more about myself in 18 months than all those teachers put together in the history of my playing. He taught me that I had the talent and intelligence, the skills and the confidence to play like a pro. He encouraged me to perform for the weekly recitals after our lessons on Saturdays. I wish I would have performed more. He played the Two Part Invention with me one Saturday, god bless him. I was still very scared of playing in public for fear of my hands. Much of my lack of confidence and reticence to play in public was because my hands sweat profusely when I played the piano. I had to keep a little towel available. I would get perspiration drops on my clothes when I played from the dripping from my hands onto my pant legs. If only I could have had the presence of mind and self-possession I have now to understand I could have overcome the problem. In any event, studying with Albert helped me at a time in my life when I sorely needed someone or something to help me find my self-esteem and this man provided the way through music.

After I had to quit taking lessons, I wrote him a letter telling him how important his teaching was to me and how grateful I was for his care and instruction. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life. It was time for me to move on though. I was trying to make my life a “do over”. I was trying to make right all the wrongs that had happened years before but I had to finally settle for what the truth was in my life. I wasn’t going to be a singer and I wasn’t going to teach music for very long. My life was taking a different direction. Life isn’t a do over, sometimes it’s just making lemonade. Sometimes it’s good enough you can just sight-read. That’s all we do in life anyway isn’t it? We just try to keep playing as we go along. Sometimes we make stuff up too.

Every time I think I should start playing the piano again I think of Albert and it pleases me that I still have all the music I learned with him and some that I’ve yet to learn. Once in awhile I take them out and sight-read them because I can. It’s not very fast and it’s not as good as it was and I certainly don’t have it memorized but it makes me happy…because I know I can.