1400 words

 

Yesterday – May 1st 2024

My eyes adjusted to my watch, and it read 3:30 AM. The usual accompaniment of aches, pains and discomforts for the various times that my body had been broken, contorted, and compressed all individually screamed for attention. Those of you who have led a full and impactful life are used to these screams.

Invariably, the decision to stay in bed until my alarm was set to go off a half hour later on my Omega Speedmaster X-33 or, say fuck it and start the day presented itself to me. Those of you who know me and have had the pleasure of staying over and being treated to breakfast know that I decided to start the day early.

The complex day ahead of me, with its varied demands and liabilities, required one thing from me. My watch at this point read 3:32 AM, and that word called out to me louder than all the virtuosic solos from my battered body.

Precision.

Site meetings and face-to-face meetings, all while preparing reports, articles and other deliverables while taking care of one of my aging vehicles, all presented their challenges before lunchtime.

The meetings required formal wear, but I left my dress watch at home and continued to wear my

X-33, whose Phase Elapsed Timers kept me on schedule throughout the day.

I also decided to bear the extra weight across my one shoulder in my gratuitously large home office shoulder bag by taking my HHKB Type-S Hybrid keyboard with me. This proved vital in making the most of my workday.

Musicians and writers will tell you about flow. When it is achieved, all else melts away, and your work or performance takes on a life of its own. In my days on stage, this was referred to as Duende. Today, I refer to it as an optimized workflow.

Surrounded by distractions from every angle, my watch kept me on track, and the precise, predictable, and tactile keyboard made six hours of work disappear within two. The lessons from years past informed me on this day to make the most of it, and such tools are indispensable.

They proved indispensable, and all of the work that needed to be accomplished by the end of the day was finished by the aforementioned lunch hour. This allowed me the time to not only take care of my family, but myself.

This is the greatest luxury – to make the time that can be dedicated to yourself and those whom you care the most about.

2021 – In Preparation for an Eventual Goodbye

That beautiful August morning was ruined before it began. Though the tactful goodbye, which was on a one-way road unnoticed by the other party, was a couple of years in the making, I still struggled.

After shutting down the office later that morning, I turned to the cameras at my side. Cameras are wonderful tools for capturing memories and making art with the purposefully chosen optical signatures of a lens, or they can act as a buffer in a socially awkward situation.

The Leica M6 and the second version of the Leica 50 Summilux were relatively new to me, but their combination instantly felt at home in my hands. The ease of zone focusing made it the perfect tool as I would discreetly made photographs while trying to forget about the bad company I was forced to be with.

As streams of exaggerations spewed from the two humans who I would no longer spend any time in the near future; I focused on making compositions. The bright, sunny afternoon and the medium-speed Ilford HP5+ allowed me to stop down the lens enough to capture everything that I wanted in front of me.

On that beautiful afternoon, I caught the beautiful wonder and joy of a toddler greeting an excited puppy for the first time.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with the camera drawing attention from every passerby as I had not yet learned to conceal the Leica logos on my camera.

The afternoon was ruined until a week later when the photographs were developed. The M6 and the M10 remained the cameras that I reached for when I needed an escape, but now they are the tools I reach for when I want to produce the compositions that I, my loved ones, and my clients will treasure for decades to come.

2002 – Duende Clasica

A little more than twenty-one years ago, I lay in bed with a decision ahead of me. My part in the recital was to perform Manuel Ponce’s Sonata Clasica, and I was deliberating about the tool of which to use.

My concert-grade classical guitar had the warm tonal dynamic range necessary to represent the humourful piece in its entirety, but as I rolled out of bed, I was not entirely happy with it.

Groggy, humid, and with an unfamiliar body breathing slowly next to me, the young adult version of me quietly made his way to the kitchen of his first apartment to make breakfast for his guest, who was undoubtedly nursing the same hangover he was.

All the while I was brewing the coffee, making the eggs, and preparing the freshly squeezed orange juice, my eyes kept an even glare at my classical guitar and that of my old trusty flamenco guitar.

My gut, back then honed for the stage, was telling me to take the flamenco guitar to the concert. I knew this would not make the other musicians happy. The sharp, bright tones of the spruce and cypress body would stand out and contrast not only the other musicians to follow me but also be an affront to the institution I was performing in.

My guest groggily arose to her feet and came to my living room wearing only the Toronto Raptors jersey which became hers after that day. My cat greeted her with glee, tail up, eyes signing with the extroverted little soul and magnanimous heart that her little furry body held.

Overjoyed by the smell of her bespoke breakfast and by the innocent energy of my beautiful cat, my guest’s age difference melted away. She was easily twice my age, but that did not matter that week, for we connected as one human does to another human based solely on interests and a common spirit.

As her eggs were laid out on top of her English muffins, she met my glance at my flamenco guitar to her left – to those of you reading this who have had this dish at my house for breakfast, yes, this is the first time that I made this breakfast meal.

“What’s bothering you,” she asked, and here I am paraphrasing, for it has been over twenty years, and she is no longer with us for me to confirm what she said that morning.

I went on to explain to her my trepidation regarding the choice of guitars, and she smiled. The lines on her face betrayed her energy and youthful, kind and loving heart. Her soft voice sang out the virtues of what truly matters in life, and she said that walking your own path is what truly matters in life. The smile was met with expressions of dejection, joy, and indifference to all the choices she made in her life that shaped who she was.

My twenty-two-year-old heart ached to play a Soleá for her that evening instead of Ponce’s great work. Comedy and dancing around expected cadences were not what my consciousness was concerned with that day.

The grace and complexities of a hard-working middle-aged woman, divorced and childless, were all I wanted to pay tribute to.

In the evening, as I put on my formal recital clothing, I drove to the concert hall alone but with my flamenco guitar in hand. The piercing eyes of the other musicians looking down upon the inferior instrument were eased by the fictitious excuse that the fourth string, D, of my concert guitar, was warped and out of tune.

Comfortable, relaxed, and well acquainted with the fretboard of the instrument that I had become one with, the comedic piece went by without a hitch. No one noticed the lack of dynamic tonality, save for a professor who expressed his dismay at my choice of instrument.

High-strung but at ease, this flamenco guitar is never far from my side, even though my hands were to be brutally shattered a couple of years later.

– Time of writing, May 2nd, 2024