Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Bassoon

Maybe it wasn't a bassoon I heard early this morning, just after I stepped out of the pool and was drying off in the cool, cool air.  Ghostly, deep, long, round, mournful notes, emerging from the dark recesses of the lifeguard staff room. There had just been a changing of the guard...

I do think it was a bassoon, because it reminded me of "Cougar Bassoon" on Prayer for the Wild Things by Paul Winter & the Earth Band, a musical celebration of the Northern Rockies, inspired by the wilderness art of Bev Doolittle.

I am under the influence of Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell, so this Fat Tuesday is definitely a Random Coinciday in the blog, and I am hearing bassoons and wondering how life and all its particles fit and don't fit together and "this wondering is the nature of matter, each of us a loose particle, an infinity of paths through the park, probable ones, improbable ones, none of them real until observed, whatever real means, and for something so solid, matter contains terrible, terrible, terrible expanses of nothing, nothing, nothing...."

I have observed the same thing about matter, and will now continue on my improbable path through bassoonland.

6 comments:

Hannah Stephenson said...

The nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Says my good pal Wally.

:)

Kathleen said...

Yes, exactly, Hannah and Wally!

Cathy said...

"Hang on, little missy! You will not drown, for I and my magical bassoon shall save you!"

I love bassoonists. I sat right in front of the bassoon section one year in youth orchestra. It was especially fun when the five-foot-tall third chair girl got out her contrabassoon, which rumbled the floor and made my music stand wobble.

If I were a sound wave (particles, waves, same diff), I would very much like to hang out in a contrabassoon.

Kathleen said...

You know, Cathy, while improbable, it's not impossible that our lifeguard/bassoonist might stumble upon this blog!! Wouldn't that be a thrill?

Kim said...

there are just so many slightly inappropriate comments I could make here about lifeguards, cougars, and thrills. I think I will refrain. But I will say I previously thought the saxophone was the sexiest instrument and now I am rethinking that...

Kathleen said...

Leave it to you, Kim, to think of that particular meaning of "cougar."