Quarantine means 40 days

I woke up at 4:20 (lol!) and did push-ups and crunches, because I really need to work on my fitness. It's nothing to do with the virus, I need to work on it anyway. I'm finding that trumpet playing at anything beyond beginner level requires having abdominal muscles that are coordinated with that the mouth is doing.

It's really, really quiet and as dawn broke early this morning and I finally went to bed, some bird was hollering up a storm. Life's got to be hard for birds right now because all the leftovers that people leave out are gone. I'm guessing it was a young gull hollering at one of its parents to feed it, not easy when they've got nothing to feed it with.

I was able to get an hour and a half of practice in - an hour of exercises out of the Irons book and then half of playing things I might play out on the street - I've been doing so much practice that's just noodling around doing exercises, that it's really been a reward when I relax and play an actual song or three, and find that I sound tons better than I used to. Good tone, range, etc. And it even feels more intuitive to play them.

So I played the Israeli national anthem and sounded great, America The Beautiful, Waltzing Mathilda, The Internationale, St. James Infirmary, etc. I've taken a huge step up, in practicing more regularly and in doing the kind of practice I've been doing, with the long tones and so on. I was playing along happily when a van pulled in at the Mr. Softee and that was it for the night - even if the guy's living in there, I don't want him to know I'm living in here, so that was enough trumpet for the night.

At least for the shut-in time, NPR's raised the quality of their shows a bit, and yesterday I heard the most wonderful playing by Wynton Marsalis. He's a year older than I am so he's old, but he's playing as well as anyone of any age. It was great to hear.

If it weren't for trumpet playing my life would be pretty drab and pointless. The idea of playing an instrument well or at least as well as one can, is to remind people that there is beauty in the world. Like most Americans I've been chased hither and thither by economic booms and crashes and chasing false dreams, and fleeing bad situations, and thus I have nothing that belonged to my parents or siblings, no photos or papers, nothing. But I have music the way everyone has music, stored away in my memories. This is how music survives. Having it written down is nice and I continue to struggle to get halfway good at reading off of printed music, but it survives.

President Tubby The Tuba has announced the shelter in place measures will apply through April, and since the original meaning of "quarantine" is literally 40 days, it makes sense.