I’m writing this blog on my new computer, seeing it appear on my new monitor, and typing it on my old keyboard. Despite Hania’s objections, and the technician’s puzzlement, I insisted on keeping the dusty old instrument. Now I can still write without having to think about what my fingers are doing (a detriment to any composition).
So, here in the office, my life has improved immeasurably. I even like the new version of Outlook, though email still clutters my inbox and editors continue to keep a low profile.
Speaking of music, Saturday evening we went to Miami with our friend Joe to hear Yefim Bronfman and the Cleveland Orchestra play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, aka “The Emperor Concerto.”
When it was over, Joe said: “If I were a baseball player, that would be my walk-up music.”
My complaint about last night’s Grammys, apart from the music, was the In Memoriam segment. The dead took a backseat, literally, to the living. Most of the time, the camera focused on the musicians who were playing, ostensibly, in homage to the deceased, while the faces of the deceased, much of the time, appeared on a wall behind the musicians. Often, I had to squint to read their names and identities. The Academy Awards, lately, has been doing something similar, distracting from the moving montage of the departed – especially moving at the Oscars because the photos are often stills from movies – with lavish, and lavishly shot, musical numbers. Why not tone down the performances and let the dead have their day?
This is the first blog written on my new keyboard. We bought a new computer, and a new keyboard because the old one – the one on which I wrote two books and numerous articles, the one my fingers felt not only at home on but at one with – was old and filthy. Right now it seems I’ll never get used to this new keyboard – a comma appeared in the last sentence when I wanted an ‘m’ – but presumably, after months of typing on it, my fingers will know its contours as well as they knew those of my last keyboard. I tried to get one that was similar: not flat – I hate typing on a laptop – and with fat keys that resemble potential pyramids as opposed to low, square pegs. But it’s not as sturdy or defined, and I wonder why form trumps function on something as private and important as a keyboard.
Watching the Weather Channel this weekend, and thinking of family and friends in New Jersey, Ohio, Georgia, I was reminded of something I wrote in my book A Way to See the World:
“In winter, cold fronts and massive storm systems sweep across the land from the Great Lakes to Okefenokee, leaving the vast majority of Florida untouched. Being here then is like living in an embassy compound in a despotic country – you watch the slow torture of others from the climatic equivalent of diplomatic immunity.”
Of course, it never occurred to me then that this would someday become a despotic country.
Yesterday I did what I do every New Year's morning: I went to the kitchen and hung the two calendars. One is of vintage food and wine posters (January is an ad for Amatller Chocolate in Barcelona) and the other is classic travel posters (Bavaria leads off this year). And, Luddites that we are, we actually use the first one to mark appointments and activities.