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14 August 98 Friday

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I'm listening to Spyro Gyra's Three Wishes again. I had something else in mind, but, I have discovered that my turntable isn't working-- and it wasn't that long ago when I last used it, either. It's a good piece of equipment-- top of the line Bang & Olafson when I bought it (they had "rounder berrins" I was told)-- but, I guess even B&O cannot withstand the ravages of time, and one of the friggin belts is gone. Rats. I was really looking forward to listening to some new old tunes... Like Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow: You Know What I Mean, Diamond Dust, AIR Blower, Cause We've Ended as Lovers, Constipated Duck-- great guitar. And there's Boz Scaggs' -- Hey! Little Feat's Waiting for Columbus! I used to crank up to the max-- 150 watts per channel on the ADS 700's and try to blow the glass out of the windows! I always said if I got married, Tripe Face Boogie would be played as the recessional. (I never did get married)... Let's see, what else is in the record box… I haven't looked in a long, long time... ZZ Top Fandango, an old favorite when I was working in the motorcycle shop... Beatles, of course... Hubert Laws... Synergy Sequencer... John Williams Boccherini Quintets-- a half speed master of Bernstein & the Orchestre National de France doing Ravel's Bolero... Harry James... Oscar Peterson... the Strausses: Deutsche Grammaphon's Digital Aufnahme aus der Berliner Philharmoniker playing waltzer, polkas, marche & overturen... Chopin! I used to actually be able to play the waltzes myself on the piano! Now I can only manage to keep up with a few of the songs on Jimmy Buffet's Coconut Telegraph-- and I can't manage the improvisations... Wait! Here's the Scott Joplin! Ragtime I can still play! What else... Elsa Lanchester Songs for a Shuttered Parlor! Great bawdy ballads and I didn't even remember I had them! And there's Antonio Carlos Jobim... The Ventures... Kismet! Alfred Drake, Doretta Morrow, Joan Diener, Henry Calvin and Richard Kiley! I preferred Howard Keel to Alfred Drake, but, Bru gave me this recording for my birthday-- no! Christmas the first year we lived in Endicott-- he knew I loved the musical... Music for Bellydancing! Ferrante and Teicher? Tom Jones! My god. I bet there's even an Englebert Humperdink in there somewhere-- what a collection. I have got to get the turntable fixed! It's funny. Music has always been a part of my life, ever since I can remember. Always there was music. Records, radio-- my own incessant inadequate attempts at rendering my favorite songs on the piano-- and then there were the voice lessons! Oy--! But it was music. Always music. And yet, recently, I feel as if I've just emerged from a great silence into a world where I have discovered music all over again. It's a strange feeling. Almost as if I had been suffering from tone-deafness, and now I'm well again. I don't quite understand what has happened, but something has changed, and now I want-- need to hear music. And now, changing the subject completely: the other day I sent off an e-mail to Tom Turpin, an entomologist at Purdue, the fellow whose site on fireflies I linked to on the 1 August 98 page. I was asking him whether he'd ever seen or heard of any blue fireflies. See, I have this very vivid memory of a night when I and my friends saw four colors of fireflies-- green, yellow, orange, and blue-- up in the Cahill's field where we had been playing baseball until dark. The colors were very distinct. I have often since seen green, yellow and orange fireflies, but never again have I seen a blue firefly, so, I thought, why not ask an entomologist about it? I figured he could probably tell me where the blue fireflies now hang out, and maybe I could go there and see them again. Well, Mr Turpin answered my e-mail, but I found his answer... annoying. He was very nice, he said he didn't think I was mistaken, but that an individual's color perceptions were… might not always be accurate, and that green often appears blue. Nuts. I know blue when I see it-- especially when I'm seeing green, and orange, and yellow, too. Compared to green, this was definitely blue. I know I am not mistaken, and I know I wasn't dreaming-- at least, I'm pretty sure... Who can know, for sure, that what one remembers is true? It's an interesting question, isn't it? The entomologist doesn't admit of blue fireflies-- and he oughta know-- so, I'm wondering this: did I really see blue fireflies? I haven't seen any since. Do they exist? If they do, why haven't I seen any? Where the heck are they? It's really bugging me. I need proof, so, if any of you have seen-- or even just heard of-- blue fireflies, please let me know. Thanks.