I used to be a musician. In my early years, it was my destiny, my fate, and my doom.
It was my destiny because of my mother. Her father was a music teacher and she herself played piano. She encouraged all her children to enjoy and play music, leading us in “kitchen band” sessions where we accompanied her rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” with our percussion section made of pots and spoons. I showed an aptitude for it, and thus I graduated from a ladle-struck saucier to a real instrument: a violin.
Fate stepped in when it became clear that my aptitude was actually a talent. In addition to playing in school orchestra (back when every public school had a music program) I also began private lessons. These torture sessions–scales, arpeggios, the dreaded Kreutzer etudes–were held in the back room at a neighborhood music shop. The shop was a dark, cluttered space that smelled of rosin and slide grease. Instruments hung on the walls like hunter’s trophies, and the glass case was filled with paraphernalia of all kinds, from strings to reed cutters to mutes of all sorts. Mr. Meacham, my violin teacher, was a stern, unhappy man with curly grey hair and a prim smile that never reached his eyes. He set a very high bar which I approached but never met; it always seemed to be just out of reach, moving higher each time my skills improved. (more…)
Last night was a first for me. Last night I did not watch the Oscars.
The team’s PO, PO P. O’Pio, was really PO’d when he found the PO at the PO.
Writers…we often cast ourselves in the lead of our own internal dramas, but rarely does one of our number actually make it to the big screen in a leading role. A couple of examples I’ve seen in recent years are The Words and Wonder Boys, in which Bradley Cooper and Michael Douglas were cast as the “writer.” (Ever notice how writers on-screen look a hell of a lot better than writers in real life?)
Seattle is quiet.
I guess I complain about meetings a lot.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 
Something…Wonderful
Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged creative writing, Dragon Magazine, reader comments, short stories, Spencer's Peace, Writing on 25 Feb 2015| 4 Comments »
Last night, as I was doing my taxes, something wonderful happened. Keep in mind: this is “wonderful” on a small, very personal scale. I did not happen upon the answer to problems in the Middle East or a cure for rampant stupidity. Nor did I find a loophole in the tax code that doubled my refund.
So, that’s what it wasn’t. With your expectations properly lowered, let’s move onward to what it was.
I was filling out Schedule SE (rather pleased that I had enough writing income to warrant its use) when an email came in. It was a message redirected to me from the Contact page here on this blog. I don’t get many direct messages from blog readers, and about half of those I do receive are from people wanting to market their wares via a guest-post on my blog–cheeky bastards–so when it was clear that this message was from a reader and not a self-promoter, it was already a good sign. I opened it, and I read.
In the hyperbolic style of internet memes: What happened next blew my mind. (more…)
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