Playing the Fiddle as Rome Burns

source: photobucket

We had already been sitting at the pub for an hour when a skinny guy in a loose leather jacket ambled up to the end of our table and started talking. I couldn't understand him at first, and figured he knew someone else.

"You need to dance to the fiddle," he told us, leaning in. "You only have so many chances to dance to the fiddle."

The live band was playing at the front of the bar, and there was some space in front of them where the crowd had given up milling.

My friend said she was enjoying the fiddle where she was sitting just fine. Dancing wouldn't add anything. She didn't mention the unfortunate blender foot injury she had acquired earlier in the day, but I got her drift. I wasn't about to ditch the group to fiddle dance with a guy whose agenda was unclear.

He persisted and then went away for a few songs. He returned with a friend, a tall unshaven man with cowlicked hair.

"You only have so many times when you can dance to the fiddle," he continued. "And this is one of them! You're just going to waste it?"

He dropped an arm onto the wobbly table making the beer slosh.

His speech was full of platitudes - the kind of tough love a boxing coach might give to an athlete one punch from a KO.

"That girl is playing her heart out. And you're just sitting there, not even clapping. All you need to do is get up. Get up and dance and forget about everything else."

My friend with the blender injury told him she had gotten her undergrad in fiddle appreciation and so the dancing was unecessary.

"You only remember half the things you do anyway," she said.

He eventually ceded. "You're good! Fine. If you ladies want to let this slip by, that's your perogative."

There's a myth about Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burned. Flames licked the sky, buildings crumbled. I didn't want to be Rome burning.

But by then the fiddle was over.

His gusto, his bravado, I thought. He would make an excellent life coach.

I need someone to rally behind me at the grocery store when I'm picking out veggies or deciding on yogourt.

But without the fiddle music, the guy left.

1000 accordions is not enough

Years ago, while spending time in my Grandparents' suburban house in B.C., I bumped into my musical heritage. I uncovered it in closets, behind dressers, in boxes. A slew of oboes, tubas, cellos, violins, sitars, organs, pianos, and gongs, lined up on the carpet. I passed a lot of time prodding instruments that were beautiful, but obviously impossible to play.

Then one day my Grandma sat down and strummed a song. Her eyes darted back and forth; her foot tapped the ground. And her head swayed like a Bollywood dancer. Then she rushed to set down the cello/accordion/sitar and explain she hadn't touched it in years.

It was infuriating how well the instruments listened to her, when I was obviously offering them all the love.

"She keeps you in the walk-in!" I whispered hoarsely.

My Grandma had two accordions and taught me how to play Amazing Grace, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and Edelweiss, ie) The same four chords. Eventually she gave me one of the accordions, and I watched my Dad grumble as he packed this box under a van seat with all my other boxes.

I felt she had invited me into a mythical family tree - one I imagined being dotted with flouting Minstrels and hide-drumming Vikings. I was next. And it wouldn't be through monotonous piano lessons my Grandma had tried to give me when I was younger. No. It would be through the accordion - the most challenging instrument I knew.

Sure accordions are loud and obnoxious, and I am neither loud nor obnoxious. But accordionists are also loners, and I've always felt an affinity to outcasts. Remember that scene in the animated Peter Pan with the sailor in the crow's nest playing the squeeze box?

Captain Hook shot him.

I hated that scene.

It's part of my emerging into adulthood (still ongoing please God) that I've sought out my heritage by irrational obsessions like learning German and lugging my accordion to parties.

Is it any wonder then, this deep desire to go where the accordions roam, where polkas run on tap all night, and felt hats and lederhosen waltz in mountain air?

I was thinking about all the aspiring journalists getting high-profile internships this summer and flying to Indonesia and meeting celebrities.

And then I thought, if I go to Kathmandu, I'll miss the world's largest accordion festival with my Grandma and her RV.

I realize that my image of "accordion festival" is probably a little off. I was picturing a hallucinatory music fest with former hippies dressed like Chestchire cats smoking fat cigars on their trailer steps in the desert.

It's Kimberley B.C. after all with accordion players over 60. I don't want to be the only one on drugs, ending my news reports with,

"This is Laura Keil, dispatching from the edge of sanity WAAAAAAANH" (=sound of accordion)

Fun, yes, but not in that collective way you expect at a summer fest.

All-night polkas. World Records for accordions played at the same time (1000). It sounds like the perfect week in July. The perfect way to skirt reality, and follow my lineage.
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New Master's Research Project?

I'm starting to think that Christians should take a cue from Muslims in trying a little less hard to see their prophet.

I apparently can't even visit a vending machine without being accosted by hallucinations. If you fast forward to 4:00 in the video, you'll listen to a man pronounce that a mutated Cheeto will be known as Cheesus.

As an atheist, I'd appreciate if Christians weren't themselves blasphemous. It lessens the role of atheists.

I'm also a little concerned by the lack of differentiation between "image of Jesus" and "Jesus."

Would Jesus approve? Or is Jesus a frying pan?

It's a little odd that most of the Jesus images turn up in food. It makes me wonder whether there was a reason I always felt hungry in church.

If I hadn't been so hungry, maybe I would have been able to pay better attention. Still, a sentence like this would have alerted me:

"A cinnamon roll, toast, a danish, pancakes, fish sticks, and now a cat."

Sigh.

I'm afraid to go for an eye exam in any state where two thirds of rear-view mirrors have dangling Virgin Mary's.

I'd like to inform you that that is not a T. That is the Lord.

Health is a funnel of gin in your ear

My roommate's girlfriend told me something tonight that changed my perspective on my favourite bar drink, the gin and tonic.

Think of it as the moment Marie-France used fireplace bellows and realized that the rips in the side created music: Voila, accordion.

Also pretend in this metaphor that the accordion can cure physical ailments... which I contend it can, but no one will ever let me finish the cure.

I'm just getting over a cold and my left ear is plugged, so everytime I blow my nose it feels as though I'm reaching 30,000 feet. That would make sense if I were drunk (1 drink = 5,000 ft). That's science. But I'm not drunk. And when sober I believe in science.

What my roommate's girlfriend told me was this. She had a friend who accidentally poured a gin and tonic in his ear when he had an ear infection.

Don't ask me how that works. Inner ear causes lack of balance, penchant for frat parties?

It cured him. So the next time he got an ear infection, he did it again.

Again, cured.

And not because he went into a coma and woke up five days later.

So I was prepared to go out tonight to the bar to test this theory. I feel an ear infection coming on. Maybe it's just my cold, but why in just one ear? I'd swagger up, show the bar man two fingers, and point to one ear. He would probably frown, thinking I'm deaf, and mouth "ten dollars." Then I would shoot back one drink, grab nearest friend/colleague, place my head on the table and say: Pour it in! For goodness sake! Do it!

But then my eyes began to lose focus, and I didn't want to hear the cure for that.

Osama? Obama? Enunciate please

My cell is my robotic secretary of state. Whatever state I'm in (right now it feels as though I'm bleeding internally from a nasty cold) I can dial anyone in the world just by saying their name.

Introducing, from my 2006 cellphone, Driving Mode. A great way to amuse yourself and others on the bus or in the Library and Archives Canada ladies' room.

I was collecting toilet paper today to nurse my one eye that hasn't stopped leaking in the past 20 hours, when suddenly a perky woman who I will describe as a fem bot, announced from my bag, "New message from (beep)" and then a man's voice said, "fucker."

I happen to have a friend with a similar name.

There was a snicker from the stall next to mine.

I often rummage through my bag, accidentally hit the driving mode button, and then say fuck. My secretary in a phone will ask politely "Did you say Laura?" Replace 'Laura' with any of the random numbers I keep in my cell phone strictly for journalistic purposes: mental health lines, motels in small-town Saskatchewan and Quebec, editors of newspapers, the U of O psych department. Don't ask me why. Don't ask me why my phone asks me if I'm trying to call a shrink when I yell fuck into my damn handbag.

But there's a bright side. I can tell my phone to call Obama, and it will find names in my contact list to suggest.

That's a snazzy way to wait in line at a club or the psych dept.

That'll be 10 dollars ma'am
(I hold up a finger as I dig through my bag. Five minutes later, after I've retrieved my phone, I sensually hit the side button in front of the bouncer)
"Please enter a command."
Contacts, I say, keeping eye contact with the bouncer.
(bouncer rolls eyes)
"Please enter a name."
Osama Bin Laden
"Did you say... Osama Bin Laden?"
"Yesss."
"Calling."

I can programme numbers under different names. I often get calls from Hillary Clinton and Josh Groban.

Even better is when my phone sets itself to Driving Mode without my knowledge and announces the caller. Trust me, entering endearingly profane names for friends is a surefire way to change your profs' opinions of you in the middle of a class on Spreadsheets.

What is this? Some kind of practical joke? Who put this phone in my handbag. Ha... ha... Her name's not [enter Bond villainess here]. It mispronounced it.

I can't wait for the robotic age.