{"id":20246,"date":"2024-11-25T19:51:35","date_gmt":"2024-11-26T00:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20246"},"modified":"2024-11-25T19:51:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-26T00:51:35","slug":"my-musical-sins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20246","title":{"rendered":"My musical sins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Frisomae - Elizabeth To Me (1971?)\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FHS-kBcxglU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I have been, for the last couple weeks<\/strong>, a very dull boy (that\u2019s what the journalists call a \u201cdog bites man story\u201d). My life has consisted of translating, reading, and some noodling on the internet for a break now and then. OK, I do sleep. I go to the gym 3 or 4 times a week, and I get up early to work on my novel-formatting 6 days a week. But basically, not much variety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This morning I was looking for my Amazon Fire tablet. Couldn\u2019t find it anywhere. I was going out to lunch (Perkins) and I wanted to read while eating, as is my wont. Well, I also have a Kindle reader, which I keep for emergencies (and for the inevitable day when the Fire burns out, because they never last long), so I pulled my book (the third volume of <em>Kristin Lavransdatter<\/em> by Sigrid Undset) up on the Kindle. But I stopped at the gym on the way to Perkins, to see if I\u2019d left the Fire there. They didn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Long story short, at the restaurant I came up with a vague memory of putting the Fire down among the junk on the dining room table this morning. And behold, when I got home, there it sat, like a friend left off the guest list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which provoked thoughts about growing old and forgetful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>So let\u2019s suppress that thought. <\/strong>How about an excursion into my murky past? I mentioned my college musical group a while back and somebody (I don\u2019t think there was more than one) asked how our music could be heard. I answered \u2013 with some relief \u2013 that our stuff has been mercifully lost in the detritus of the analogue recording age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And then one of my old friends posted the YouTube video above. Somebody \u2013 for some reason \u2013 has acquired our two albums and posted one song from each. The other one is disqualified for my purposes because I neither wrote it nor sing in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The song I posted above, \u201cElizabeth to Me,\u201d is not characteristic of our output, being not religious, but a plain love song. The melody was written by my friend Chuck Pedersen. He asked me to give it lyrics. He wanted to have it addressed to his girlfriend Beth (who later joined the group and, even later, married him). The lead vocalist on this recording is yours truly. I don\u2019t like it much \u2013 my voice seems to me uneven and weak. However, the song as a whole is, I think, not much worse than a lot of songs that became big hits in those fuzzy-minded days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, you wanted one of our songs; here it is. You asked for it, as the judge said to the man sentenced to hang for attempted suicide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been, for the last couple weeks, a very dull boy (that\u2019s what the journalists call a \u201cdog bites man story\u201d). My life has consisted of translating, reading, and some noodling on the internet for a break now and then. OK, I do sleep. I go to the gym 3 or 4 times a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20246\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">My musical sins<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20247,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20246\/revisions\/20247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}