I was up until 7AM and finished my awake cycle by doing some octave exercises while watching what little was watchable on YouTube. The video is always messed up or hardly video, at a few frames per second between freezes. The audio still mostly comes through, fairly much in sync with only a few pops and clicks.
The last things I watched, after I'd put the flute away, were two short videos by James Galway. I'd watched the documentary "Being James Galway" and some very recent stuff - he's an old duffer now. But these were uploaded about 10 years ago and were probably a bit older than that. They were amazing. I was beginning to think, "What's the big deal about James Galway? I like his attitude, but I'm not sure I'm that crazy about his playing". What I heard was so amazing; now I understand how he could say that, after studying in France, that he had come to learn the French style and had been told he already played the French style better than anyone.
When I was a teen and had escaped my mom's place, my dad had James Galway records and Jeanne-Pierre Rampal was a big deal, his records being on almost all the time at this one art gallery I hung out at a lot. Maybe this is why, it being all I could afford, I spent about all I had for a little Aulos recorder and practiced scales with it so much. Two things happened: My dad said at first I'd sounded awful but was starting to sound good. And I'd realized it would never sound like an actual silver flute and I quit.
But what I heard last night was the dream, the ideal, of what a flute could sound like. I think one piece was by Poulenc and the other was "Irlandaise" by that wonderful composer Claude Bolling. I was gobsmacked and thought, Can a trumpet ever do this?
I went to sleep the fan blowing on me as I do these days, and told myself I could sleep all I wanted. All I wanted turned out to be until around 8 in the evening.
I got up and first thing thought I ought to go outside and look, because I'd found one of those metal briefcase things, quite well made and heavy actually, in the bountiful dumpster. It had turned out to be equipped with lots of foam, some Plexiglas etc., holding an assortment of sales samples of Sony LiPo batteries. Eh, not interesting, and I'd decided I didn't want the case, either. Too heavy and likely to attract attention. So I'd left it out last night and early in the morning one of the guys from next door picked it up, seemed to pull the stuff out of it, and took it. Great.
But I wanted to check for any of the insides left lying around. I heard a little sound and peeked out the mail slot - there as a bum, stuffing bags with ... something ... from the dumpster I'd cut up cardboard in. Woops. After Mr. Bum was done and had wobbled off, heavily laden, on his bike, I went out and checked and yep, there was foam and Plexiglas left out. So I put that into the dumpster, noting that my bag of plastic and tubing had no been taken. So I'd done right putting it in there.
The heat's supposed to let off a bit, which is nice for adjusting to it.
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