“Hello in There”
It’s been two weeks again – just not that much to post about. The same old routine here – work, swimming, and elliptical for me and work, running, early morning walks, and elliptical for Diana.
The bathroom remodel continues and should be completely finished by the next post here. The original contractor quit after hiring a tile guy that made a complete mess of 256 square feet of glass wall tiles. He realized he was too far in the hole and was going to lose a lot of money on the job. We now have the original contractor back (he was too busy to do it on our previous timeline) and he will finish up, with some different wall tiles, in a week or so. Meanwhile we have to decide what to do about recovering money from the guy who quit on us. We’ve learned a lot of lessons through this process.
My leg is doing well – I can do the elliptical or swim for an hour at a time with no ill effects. The orthopedist checks it out on Tuesday and I’m hoping this is my last visit.
In addition to continuing to plow through my Winston Churchill book, I read “Normal People” by Sally Rooney this week. It was a quick and reasonably light read, contrasting with the dense detail of the World War II history.
The story is set in Ireland and revolves around two friends who meet in high school and then attend Trinity College together. At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers—one they are determined to conceal.
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.
I started the new Stewart O’Nan book yesterday and should finish that up today – it’s only 175 pages long. If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know that O’Nan is one of my favourite authors – more on this novel next week.
This week I’ve been working on the chorus to John Prine’s “Hello in There” on the piano. Here’s what John Prine had to say about this song, one that he composed in his head while walking his mail delivery route in his early twenties:
“I heard the John Lennon song “Across the Universe,” and he had a lot of reverb on his voice. I was thinking about hollering into a hollow log, trying to get through to somebody—“Hello in there.” That was the beginning thought, then it went to old people
I’ve always had an affinity for old people. I used to help a buddy with his newspaper route, and I delivered to a Baptist old peoples home where we’d have to go room-to-room. And some of the patients would kind of pretend that you were a grandchild or nephew that had come to visit, instead of the guy delivering papers. That always stuck in my head.
It was all that stuff together, along with that pretty melody. I don’t think I’ve done a show without singing “Hello in There.” Nothing in it wears on me.”
It’s amazing to me that someone that young can write such a mature and indelible song. Here’s a bit of the wonderful chorus on my piano:
Certainly one of my top five all time songs!
On the guitar I decided to try and learn some of “Sweet Child Of Mine” by Guns & Roses. I don’t have the echo and other pedals that Slash uses to get this sound on the introduction, but gave it my best shot. I’m working on the solos and may have one of those in rough form for the next post.
Practicing this inspired me to finally put some new strings on my guitar. It must be close to 10 years since I changed them. Not too much of an operation but it does take a little work. And then there’s the constant tuning until the strings settle down – I rarely had to tune with the ancient strings. Here’s my weak attempt – I enjoyed trying it if nothing else:
Continuing the guitar theme, The Allman Betts Band have a new album out. This is the band made up of sons of Greg Allman and Dickey Betts. We loved their show at the Kessler a year or so ago – back when live music was a big part of our lives. Here’s my early favourite from their new stuff:
From a completely different genre, Yo-Yo Ma and a few friends have an eclectic new album out. Here’s “Waltz Whitman” – Ma is certainly one of those musicians you can pick out almost immediately from his sound – absolutely gorgeous:
And finally, some female folk rock from the early seventies, courtesy of Sandy Denny. Denny was the lead singer for the epochal English folk group Fairport Convention (Richard Thompson on guitar). This one caught my attention on a play list – something about the sound just grabbed my ears, maybe the key change right before the vocals start, and the sound of Thompson’s guitar: