More war

 298th day sober. I listed a dozen things on Ebay last night and then practiced a bit, but felt tired pretty quickly so I only practiced about half and hour. 

I woke up at what's been the usual time, a bit after 4. I'd gotten something in my throat last night and it was irritating enough that I tried to cough, half-awake, and then woke up and had a good cough. This gave me a headache that was still there when I got up. 

On the radio there's more about the Ukraine war. The Russians have taken over Chernobyl and Kiev Airport, except maybe the Ukrainians have taken the airport back etc. Putin's doing a ham-handed job of things. If the Ukraine gov't is a puppet neo-Nazi regime installed by the US and supported only by a right-wing minority, then Putin should be able to go in and selectively prosecute them with the majority's support. Instead he's bombed civilians. Way to win hearts and minds there, Vlad.

This headache is reason enough on its own to quit trumpet. Shakuhachi may take a lot of air but as far as pressure goes, there's no need for it. Even practicing the 2nd octave it's not related to taking any pressure or at least what feels like none to a trumpet player. It comes down to a changing of the mouth cavity and tongue level and that's no-effort compared to trumpet.  

I've been thinking I should hang onto my trumpet because it's a proven money-maker but I've been averse to the idea of "training" on it and on the shakuhachi because they're pretty much opposites. But on YouTube I saw a gal play a song on a shakuhachi and then on a conventional silver flute, granted with a "Shakulute" mouthpiece Monty Levinson makes and I thought she sounded a bit better on the shakuhachi, but both playings sounded good and it seems she's a flutist and that's given me an idea. 

I'd busked with a flute years ago and I even made some decent money with it. I'd dropped it for not being as "cool" as the trumpet or as loud, plus there's a reason a lot of prominent flutists play with the flute angled downward. Emptying the moisture bugged me, although it's nowhere near the disgusting show emptying moisture from a brass instrument is. 

It would have a lot of advantages as something to be "cross trained" on instead of the trumpet: 

(1) Pressure is not essential to playing like it is for trumpet. 

(2) It takes a lot of "puff" making it a good cross-training instrument for the shakuhachi

(3) It's keyed in C which makes playing a ton of stuff fairly easy

(4) It's a lot easier to play Western/popular music 

(5) It's super easy to carry around. The case is really small. 

(6) Back in Hawaii, where the trumpet would be a noisy imposition, the flute would probably not be.

(7) It's easy to keep clean - no hidden "tubes of crud" like with the trumpet

(8) I've proven I can get up to speed and making money with it in fairly short order

(9) My hands are not actually too small for it

(10) It's something of a "family tradition" as my older sister played flute in high school. 

On this last, I have fond memories of my older sister practicing and of the mysterious "Flitz" cloth used to keep the flute shiny. Later, years after she'd left the house one of my younger sisters tried playing it and I remember with less fondness, her playing "One Day Over The Rainbow" and coming to one note, which she'd get wrong, sense something was wrong, take a breath or two, and start again ... over and over and over. 

I finally said something like "Let me try it, I'll show you..." but when I tried I almost fell over fainting. 

I don't know what happened to the thing after that. Later, when I was back in Hawaii in 2003, I told my older sister she must have been pretty good if she was playing at Punahou football games. She replied, "Not good, loud!". 

I think I may be onto something though. Just like a trumpet player might also play cornet and flugelhorn, someone who plays shakuhachi might also know their way around a conventional flute. 

I packed up an oscilloscope that had to go out, and if it were not for my headache, I'd have run up to FedEx myself. But I gambled that Ken would come by tonight and he did so I was able to foist the task off on him. He wrote me out 2 weeks' worth of pay and we had tea and talked for a while. His blood sugar monitor went off and he asked for something sugary and I was able to serve him the bottle of Mexican 7-Up I had ready for such situations, and that got him from 75 or so (he starts getting grey spots, he says, at 70) up to 120. Plus it tastes good, so I'll have to get another bottle of it to keep here. 

He said his daughter "paid" about $360k for her house in North Vegas, and it went up $50k in the last 6 months. Of course real estate will go up forever! And Las Vegas will never-ever run out of water. In any case her mortgage payment is $1200 and she's already rented out a room so it's all good. Until the next RE crash or the water runs out. (I sure didn't say this last.) 

I'll be the first to admit she was smart to both stay with the airline she was super smart to stay with the airline she's been working for, starting out as baggage handler, for I dunno maybe a couple of decades now. And smart to find out a 401(k) can be used to pay the "down" on a house. I just dunno if North Vegas is a good place to buy one. 

So Ken and I loaded the 'scope into his truck and we'd talked everything out and it was a nice visit. Once he was gone I packed about 8 things to take to the downtown post office and now I can finally visit the bank again. 

Ken had brought by 8 of these things that are some kind of internet wireless access things and they turned out to be worth actual money so at least I got those listed, slightly undercutting the other guy selling them too. At least ours don't have handwritten labels.... 

I got involved researching flutes, and have decided the one I'm interested in is the Yamaha 362. It comes down to wanting something new, it has to have open finger holes because then you can do cool stuff like half-holing to bend notes, and it has to be a Yamaha. There are a *lot* of other flute makers out there and I did a ton of reading. There are other brands, some of which are cheaper and some of which people love and others don't, and it kept coming back to Yamaha as the best choice. 

A Yamaha 362H costs most of $2000. I'm going to sit on this idea for a while because of this. The argument against it is I won't play the thing enough to get my money's worth out of it. Like the clarinet I don't play. 

I was sure I'd play that clarinet too. I had my mind stuck on "Jazz" instruments and had the idea I'd put in some time on the clarinet and then, naturally, get a sax. I thought the clarinet would involve a lot less spit and grottiness than a trumpet. A few times playing it and then cleaning the mouthpiece enlightened me on that - nope. I don't know where that junk comes from, but between that nasty reed and my mouth there was created some kind of ... sludge ... that made a trumpet seem positively hygienic. 

From my flute playing days I remember exactly none of that. I remember mainly it taking a fair amount of air and that bugged me but if I'm going to learn shakuhachi there's no getting around that. I'm simply going to have to learn how to breathe, if it takes me years. 

Back in my short foray into flute playing, I'd been "puffy" even when I went to playing a cornet I had, so my breath on flute can't have been very good at all. But I do remember that I honestly did alright, money-wise. I'm kind of amazed, looking back now because it has to have been around 2012 or 2013. 

I wasn't thinking about retiring back in Hawaii then. I wasn't thinking about much other than that particular day. Somehow I gravitated towards trumpet as the loudest instrument that's easy to carry, and figured Rabbit Trumpet Guy must be making a fortune somehow and I wanted to do the same. It took me the longest time to learn how pathetic he was, and about how unconcerned with being musical he was. 

Of course they're all gone now; all the buskers. Red the flute player probably isn't alive, and Rabbit Trumpet Guy is just plain gone. There are no other buskers now. The whole scene is gone. And "busking season" will start on May 1. That's the season: May 1 to October 1. I'd like to get back out there because it beats moping around here.