04/27/04

something happened today that was horrible enough to write about.

so, in the wonderful time off i'd had of late, i've been shopping for a new piano-friend.
the old piano-friend is not a friend at all, it's a clunky old brambach grand piano from the forties (if you're on the mailing list, you'll soon get a post that i am selling it for very very cheap, i think). it makes sounds like a piano only with the greatest amount of convincing. and with a few months home before we go away for tour all summer, i finally have some time to write.
so i have been hopping all over topwn, going to this store and that, answering want ads, following sheisty leads on craig's list, looking for a new friend.

today i was driving down the street in brookline and passed a little piano store.
"o look!", amanda thought, "a little piano store! how nice! i'll go in there and look at their pianos, and maybe one will be my new friend!!!"

so i went in. and they had lots of pianos and i started tinkling about on them (as one does when one is testing out pianos). and the salesman came over.
i asked him, how much is this piano? and this one? is it new? is it old? and he answered my questions and then went back to surfing internet porn while i kept tinkling around and testing, looking for the friend.

and then i found a nice one, it was bright and loud the way i think a piano should be and i sat down to play it in earnest.
and i played it the way i have played in 12 other piano stores and places in the past few weeks: some loud, some soft, some very loud, some pounding bass to see if it reverberates nicely, the ending of truce to see if it rings, and so forth. and after i had been playing for a minute the man came back.

he said "you are playing this piano way too loud." and he wanted me to leave.
i was so shocked that i didn't even think to say "are you out of your mind, moron? I am here to buy a piano, let me play whatever the hell i want!"

but i was just humiliated, and walked out. and was pondering all these things in my heart when a moment later my cellular phone rang and it was the producer of our next record, who has been helping me to find a new piano by listening to some of them, and all of a sudden i burst into tears and couldn't stop crying for a few minutes. i was amazed. i hadn't really thought it was all that upsetting. but it was. it hit that old nerve, that deep old wound of childhood carved out when i was never taken seriously and told that the so-called music i was banging out of the household piano wasn't music at all, it was just...noise.

but then a wonderful thing happened.

my loving and kind friend brian viglione was driving by the area and saw my blue car parked and stopped to look for me. and i told him my sad tale of the mean man that made me leave the store.
and while i sat across the street and spied through the large picture window in the front of the store, brian walked in and did his best impersonation of Hunter S. Thompson trying to buy a piano, acid-flashback nervous twitch and all.
He completely freaked the guy out. And got his card.

i posted the address to send friendly hate mail, but have taken it off.
the poor guy got inundated and i think the point got made.