Merry Dismas

“Merry Dismas,” I said to the old-time-crook-turned-volunteer-over-the-years, as I arrived at the church. Dismas by the way, (we are told) was the thief on the cross who asked Jesus to remember him.

Soon I was reminded of two of the core talents of this large motley crew of ex-cons and the parishioners and other weirdos who find the time and wherewithal to fall into their lives (or too often the facsimiles thereof) in the interest of community safety (in the interest of basic humanity is more like it): Which are… cooking and singing! The meal was perfect, tender and tantalizing and the notes, pitch and acoustics which followed, upstairs in the sanctuary were… damn fine. I closed my eyes, sealed my lips, ignored the lyrics for the most part and just.. savoured.

After all had filtered out except for Soul Man, the High-Flying Dutchman and myself, the Dutchman indulged himself with the grand piano. His home model is an upright. I relayed the sad state of my slow dysfunctional explorations into classical music and was rewarded with a lively and wickedly effective demonstration of the basic differences between Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Schubert and Chopin, as I leaned over the bouncing strings and hammers, really feeling them and realizing that I really need to scrap these classical collections with their random moments and actually sink my teeth into one composer at a time. And from what I heard, I knew I had to go straight for Bach. I’m exploring now; starting with organ pieces; some of them of the “fugue” persuasion. Probably not the right starting point. Oh well.

This Dutchman fellow always intrigues me. He’s super-well read, a clear thinker, smooth talker. I hope to see more of him but I did not propose this last night. I am not currently brimming with confidence that my company is much desired by others at this time. Perhaps I will try to get some of my shit together. It's resolution season after all.