Tag Archives: A Lover’s Concerto

Dispatch from the sickbed

https://youtube.com/watch?v=aGDZc9bdUZM

I am not well.

This goes without saying when it comes to my emotional health, but the malaise has spread to my mortal coil.

I’m at an age when digestive complaints are more the rule than the exception. But when my latest discomfort turned out to be the equal and opposite problem from my usual torments, I grew concerned. Once I’d dosed myself and, shall we say, eliminated the problem, I was left utterly enervated. No energy. Even more alarmingly, I had little appetite.

I did a web search for DELTA VARIANT SYMPTOMS, of course. But whatever I’ve got doesn’t sound like that. I’m hoping things will be better tomorrow. I had a reasonable supper tonight, and enjoyed it, but found in my heart no desire for further snacks. That’s not normal. I’m running out of groceries and need to go to the store, but I lack motivation.

It would be nice if the indifference to food lingered on, became my new normal. As long as the stomach cramps don’t come back.

I’ve shared the clip above before. It’s Motown group The Toys, singing A Lover’s Concerto, from 1965. I just like it. Driving around in my loaner car, which has no working radio, I’ve been reduced to singing to myself for entertainment. Last Sunday on the trip to Kenyon, I was working on this one. I’ve always been good at remembering song lyrics and poems, but if I neglect them for a while, bits of the lines slough off. But I went over them enough times to reconstruct them, pretty close. It gave me something to do besides pondering my mortality.

A private confession, just between you and me.

My name is Lars, and I’m an addict.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

I’m more… obsessed. Or compulsed. Compulsively obsessed.

With a music video.

No, not a music video. They didn’t exist back in 1965, when this was recorded. It’s a clip from a TV show called Hullabaloo, which I vaguely recall from my teenage years. We didn’t watch it very much.

And I wasn’t actually much aware of this song when it rose to Number Two on the Billboard chart. When I first noticed it, it was already an oldie. What it actually is, is an arrangement of the Minuet in G Major, which was long attributed to Bach but actually appears to have been first composed by a guy named Christian Petzold. The arrangers changed the time signature from 3/4 to 4/4, gave it lyrics and a Motown arrangement, and handed it over to a girl group called The Toys. And this is the result:

Continue reading A private confession, just between you and me.