the program
Mean Steve Piano was a strange guy, to me anyway. We just didn’t have much in common despite both being pianists and on the scene of Toronto’s Queen street once […]
another ordinary day of music
A young boy repeated to his violin teacher a racist joke he heard in the schoolyard, which he didn’t understand. The teacher ridiculed the boy and not understanding why the […]
buonanotte
After dinner I was walking through the mall with my book, pt. 2 of Chava Rosenfarb’s trilogy about the Lodz ghetto when an man somewhere in his early eighties, who […]
Al in a wheelchair and whatshername playing something in the air.
One of my friends, when we were eleven, at the Eaton’s department store, sat in a wheelchair. He helped himself to it, there happened to be one there. I wheeled […]
train your mind
Thoughts are not the stuff that makes change. Nails, wood, hammers are. If you could make your thoughts like nails, wood and hammers no problem. You cannot train your mind […]
monsters
A student I liked, dropped the course because of mental health. I tried to help, to be an ear, to offer extensions for their assignments but they’re depressed. I see […]
robert nasmith
I didn’t know a lot about Bob Nasmith. After he died I read many more details, about Vietnam, about regular nudity and about Chopin. I just knew him as one […]
piano nature
A kid learned the beginning of something on the piano and they enjoy it and play it a bunch but can’t stop showing everyone and anyone. Sort of wish I […]
watch your parking meters
When doing the PhD, one has to sign up to be a teaching assistant, it’s part of the dental and drug plan justification while at graduate school. Then one attends […]
teaching yourself
The weirdest part about teaching myself to play something on the piano I couldn’t play before, is why can’t I teach myself Japanese, brain surgery or how to fly an […]