Wireless Ramble

I'm taking a practice break here at Drake University, watching the goldfinches dart between the trees in the quad like little yellow torpedoes. The semester must have wound to a close this week as all the rooms save one are unoccupied. Just a lone class piano student hammering away at Chopin's E-minor Prelude. It's the same one I memorized for one of my class piano juries.

The practice rooms here have these great big back-sloping windows which look out over the campus. They make me feel like I'm on the bridge of a destroyer or in an air traffic control tower or something. The rooms have a good sound but are very leaky. If someone is practicing next door it is like they are playing right into your ear. Still, aside from the sound proofing and the distracting view, I would rate them among the best I've used.

This evening I've booked myself so tight that after finishing a concert at the Hotel Fort Des Moines I'll just have time to stuff my horn in my gig bag, bell sticking out, and race 7 blocks to the civic center for a Tchaik 4 rehearsal. For some reason I love when things like that happen. Running from one downtown venue to another. I wish every day could be that packed with communal music making. And usually it isn't 7 blocks but 7 counties between gigs. I swear I'm paid much more to chauffeur myself around than to play horn.

To give you some idea of how much driving is entailed in freelancing in the Midwest (outside of Chicago, that is), yesterday I put new tires on my car. This is the second set in 16 months and I ran them near bald. They will be paid for by part of my tax refund which itself is largely due to 30,000 deducted business miles last year. And keep in mind I don't do much work related driving in the summer so that comes to about 10k miles every three months or about 100 miles a day. If you want to do this kind of work you had better enjoy your car... a lot! That's enough stream of consciousness for today.