I Can't Hear You

Hello - is this thing on?

Ludwig van Beethoven, many say, was not white. Beethoven had Moorish ancestry dating to the Spanish occupation of the portion of the Netherlands, now part of Belgium, from which his paternal grandfather hailed.

If I understand correctly, this ultimately means Beethoven's grandfather was ethnically Flemish, with some other stuff, maybe or maybe not - but really, why not - mixed in. The main thing I know about Flems and Dutch personages is that they dislike each other so much, SO much, I've read, that even though Flemish and Dutch are technically two dialects of the same language - speakers of each can understand the other - they are classified as separate languages.

A 15-second scan of the Internets does not turn anything up to refute this, so I'm going with it.

Anyway, imagine if we hated the Australians so much that we pretended we couldn't understand a damn thing they said. This is probably a bad analogy, because who could hate Aussies? But if an Aussie weren't keen on Americans, and turned up her nose and pretended not to be able to understand a Texas drawl or a Hollywood vocal fry, that would be roughly equivalent. I think. I'm not sure, I changed my major from Linguistics to Rhetoric and Writing a while ago.

We digress anyway. The point is, Beethoven may or may not have had Black ancestry, evidence in support of which is that he was fairly swarthy for a German, and wrote music with unusual rhythmic sensitivity for his date and time.

I'm good with the first point. The second makes me uneasy. Even the staunchest African-Beethoven theorist is not suggesting that Beethoven spent any of his lifetime whatsoever in Africa. Therefore, any notion of his Black ancestry having an effect on his unique musical expression suggests at best a troubling genetic component to his musical proclivities. Beethoven was raised in Europe - never set foot outside of it, as far as I've read; never knew any but a vanishingly small handful of people who had. To suggest that a style of musical composition is racially based is also to bring up all sorts of other suggestions, hopefully long debunked, of which races are better at certain things than others.

Why the sudden interest? My sister Margie drew this wonderful bust of Beethoven, which an amazing tattoo artist in Queens - Astoria (Body Language Tattoos on Broadway, if anyone's interested) brought to life on my shoulder. I've been hankering after this for a few years. It's amazing, and doesn't really hurt much at all, if you're used to hungry cats at 5 AM.

So now it's personal, you know.

On a generally unrelated note, this morning I got up and went to the kitchen and found Bingo bathing himself on the stove, as is his wont. "Bingo!" I shouted. He ignored me.

Bingo kept on licking himself, his back to me, and I kept on shouting at him, unregarded. "Bingo!" I said. "BINGO!!" I was right behind him. He showed no notice. Finally I touched him and he started almost out of his skin, looked at me reproachfully, meyowled a few times, and jumped off the stove. He had no idea I was there.

Bingo is stone deaf.

He's 16 years old, so I guess this should come as no particular shock, and might have been going on for quite a while, but I had no idea. Poor little guy. He already gets special dispensation for his advanced age, so I gave him more cream when I made coffee, and an extra cup of stinky food, and plenty of extra chest scritchies as he purred on my lap, warty old neck extended. I love that little guy.

There's a lot more I wanted to say about issues of race, social acceptance, and disability - not to mention body art - but this will have to do for tonight. The fall semester has begun, and as usual, when I have writing to do for school or work, interest in doing it for fun dwindles. Which is a shame, because the whole point of a blog (isn't it?) is that there's no actual expectation that it be any good.

So here's a terrible joke from our old friend, the Internet:

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple of days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."

He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."

*mic drop*

What a Drag It Is Getting Old

Remember before the Internet?

Well, I do. If you were a quote-smart kid-unquote (i.e your parents were some kind of weird antisocial brainiacs), you were aware of the existence of such things as "personal computers," and possessed a vague foreshadowing that these exotic machines might one day break through the heretofore unbreached frontiers of geekdom and draw Mr. and Mrs. Everyfamily into the warm glow of their electronic embrace.

Then you shook yourself a little and said, "Naaaaaaah."

However, as it happens, the dang thing is just about everywhere these days (unless of course you work for a government agency). What isn't on the Internet? Everything is. Everything.

The quickest example to spring to my mind, just at the moment, is the lyrics to Cocteau Twins songs.

To be perfectly honest, my perception of the universe as I know it (or heretofore knew it) is rather shaken. I guess I was about eighteen, nineteen years old when I first became aware of the Cocteau Twins; but one of the most basic functions of the Cocteau Twins - as I understood it - is to provide lyrics with the profound meaning of which you cannot possibly find any faults, inasmuch as you can't begin to understand what the heck it is that they're singing.

Such was my life, from the time I was eighteen or nineteen until the age of forty; and readily can you believe what a happy, carefree existence it was. Then you go and find out that one of your favorite songs of all time contains such a line as

"Tis the lucky lucky penny penny penny penny"

in the midst of a whole bunch of other words that also don't make any sense, and, well, you get a little discouraged. All those years of smoking pot in college for NOTHING.

New Frontiers

It's a really good thing the Ford Escapes in the state fleet have an auxiliary jack you can plug your iPod into. Otherwise I would have had to sing a capella.

I would also otherwise have had Barry Manilow stuck in my head for 723 miles. Or, say, 690 miles - because somewhere between Dripping Springs and Fredericksburg, I passed a sign for a ranch advertising "Showgoats." Some people are just sick.

This week's was my first solo outing for the state: my boss, who was supposed to accompany me, had something come up at the last minute. So I headed out to inspect the visitor center in Langtry all by myself. It's a long way, but a wonderful drive if you enjoy that sort of thing (what luck - I do!). I took the scenic route to Langtry: out 290 through Fredericksburg to I-10 to Junction, where I got lost. First of all, the exit sign for US 377 just says "North" - I guess on the grounds that nobody really wants to go south anyway. So I kept driving west, assuming that the southbound exit came later.

But it was soon apparent - luckily soon, because otherwise I'd have found myself in Sonora - that this was not the case, so I exited, turned around, backtracked, exited again in Junction, headed south on 377, and found a gas station, where I discovered that I don't know how to use the state card provided with the vehicle. (I've always gassed up at a District office.) Ten hilarious minutes during which I thought I'd be stranded forever in Kimble County, an amused convenience store clerk, and a few panicked phone calls later, I got it figured out, but this only enabled me to get lost some more. You have to make a right turn in Junction to stay on 377, otherwise you end up on Loop 481 which eventually deposits you, wailing curses, right back onto I-10 heading east. So be careful!

Eventually I found my highway. US 377 south of Junction looks like an FM (that's Farm-to-Market road, for you non-Texans) - a little two-lane affair with a yellow stripe down the middle and narrow shoulders. The speed limit is 75. Way too fast, way too fast for this road! I thought. An hour later I found myself doing ninety.

When you reach US 90, you turn left to go to Del Rio - and you're pretty much there, just on the west side of town - but you turn right to go to Langtry. Langtry is unincorporated. Although the 2000 census gave its population as 150, it's declined in recent years; and one of my coworkers in the visitor center guessed the current population is around 19.

"What do you do for entertainment way out here?" another coworker said she was asked by a visitor. She laughed. "Heck, when you're my age, a muumuu and an easy chair are all the entertainment you need!"

The US 90 drive from Del Rio to Langtry takes you across the Amistad Reservoir - blue and beautiful in a stark landscape of scrubby brownish-green - through Comstock (don't blink!), and a border control checkpoint (I wasn't the droids they were looking for, and was immediately waved along), through large, lumpy hills with a sparse growth of brush, and across Seminole Canyon and the Pecos River - the US 90 span across it is the tallest bridge in Texas, and the third highest in the United States.

Langtry is on the west side of the Pecos, as anyone familiar with Judge Roy Bean will be aware. The scenery is breathtaking and desolate, not readily captured with the least expensive digital camera money could buy, and the road was virtually empty except for the occasional 18-wheeler, border patrols, and vultures swooping down to pick at the pulped remains of a skunk on the pavement, identiable only by the smell - waiting until the last instant to wing out of the way of the speeding car, flapping away within inches of my windshield. If you don't set your cruise control, you glance down and realize you're doing 100.

Del Rio was not much of an adventure, since (1) I was incredibly tired by the time I got to my hotel room, and (2) going out on the (border) town alone might not be the best idea for a woman in my, um, position. So I picked up dinner, took it to my room, and slept until 5:30 - needing to be back in Langtry by 8am to finish the inspection, wrap up, and make it to Austin for Diane's retirement reception back at work. I drove like - like a state employee out of Langtry. And I made it in time, too.

I love my job. And I love, love, love my iPod!

Click here for photos.

The Center of the Universe

"Look, look!" enthused an adorable little boy in swim trunks - I'd guess he was about two and a half - to Robbie and me, sitting on top of the hill overlooking the Long Center, Auditorium Shores, and the hike-and-bike trail. The man-made hill is crowned by a ring of stone benches surrounding a handsome limestone-and-granite map of Texas. Austin is picked out with a star on the map; several other, less relevant Texas cities are indicated by a dot, and under each dot the distance in miles from this, the sunniest, happiest, most beautiful city on Earth, is given. "Look!" said the little boy, zigzagging excitedly back and forth across the map. "It's the whole world!"

Who could disagree?

The little cutie was drawn to us by Bella, Robbie's miniature dachshund, who responded to his attentions by curling her tail tightly underneath her body and trying to hide under the bench. Robbie coaxed her out and held her in his arms so the little boy could pet her. The child caught sight of Robbie's watch. "Hey, what time is it?" he demanded urgently.

"It's almost four," Robbie told him.

"What's that mean??"

We weren't able to give a satisfactory answer, though, so the little fellow orbited the world a few more times before dashing down the hill to join his mother, grandfather, and brother, who were ambling along the spiral path that climbs the hill. The mother approached us after a few minutes and asked us, smiling, "How old is your son?"

"Wait - he isn't yours?!"

So I stood up and gazed down the hill towards the splashing water fountains until I spied a woman looking around, cupping her hands to her mouth and shouting. I waved to her. "Is that your mom in the red shirt?" I asked my little companion, "I think she's trying to find you." He dashed down the hill to a happy reunion. Awwwww... I guess it's just as well. Robbie's got Bella, and I already have a kitten.

I sat atop that same hill yesterday evening, too, with a new friend, who took me to see a new symphony by Dan Welcher, the Bruch Violin Concerto #1 with the amazing, energetic, and very snappily dressed Sarah Chang, and the Tchaikovsky Capriccio Italien.

The natives were restless - children waiting to splash in the water fountain plaza, which runs through cycles and pauses every several minutes to allow parents to drag away their exhausted offspring; but there were none of those last night. The tense, rhythmic chant of "Wa-ter! Wa-ter! Wa-ter!" was clearly audible from the top of the hill.

My friend has season tickets to the Austin Symphony Orchestra. In most cities, this would entail a good mix of classics and new pieces - and there's really no getting away from the pops concerts (nor from people who whisper to one another loudly during the performance, kick the back of your seat, and shout "Bravo!" at female soloists), but the one thing that kind of annoyed my friend was that a Charlie Daniels Band concert was included in his season subscription. "When I buy season tickets to the symphony," he remarked, quite reasonably I thought, "I am specifically paying NOT to see the Charlie Daniels Band."

I guess that's Austin for ya.

Allegro, ma with a 40% chance of non troppo

“And today’s weather should be Beethoven-esque,” enthused the announcer on KMFA this morning, “because it’s going to be absolutely gorgeous!”

I don’t mean to be unfair – he didn’t ask to have my alarm clock set to his station; and honestly, there’s probably not a lot he could be saying at 6 AM that wouldn’t piss me off. Still his statement seemed fairly insipid (and if he improved on it any I didn’t hear, because I hit the snooze button). Beethoven’s gorgeous. Brahms is gorgeous. Prokofiev is gorgeous. But they’re hardly interchangeable.

Much of Beethoven’s music has a dark, troubled beauty, better suited to an impending storm than to a bright, warm spring day. Mozart, on the other hand, brings cheerful breezes and sunshine to mind.

Bach weather would be calm and pleasant, without surprises. A Bartók day would be disjointed and jangling. You’d be on your way to the pool to work on your tan and suddenly get lost in a blizzard.

Pretty much all your Russian composers are extremely windy. Shostakovich also has acid rain.

Philip Glass is a long, monotonous, dull Sunday afternoon with nothing to do, and you’d like it to come to an end, but it does not.

Then you have your really heavy composers. If it’s a Mahler or Bruckner day, you probably want to board up the windows and stay in the basement. Wagner weather takes things further: it uproots mighty trees, razes buildings, disorders the universe, and seduces your wife.

I’d get a job as a radio announcer, but you have to get up too early.

Out in the Cold

It snowed a lot in Alabama today. I went to high school in Madison, and during all my years there I only remember one solitary snowfall sparsely dusting the ground with dirty white. Cue all the usual phenomena: those unaccustomed to the sight are awed, not to mention immobilized - schools and businesses shut down, while those who have lived in more northern climes take grand pleasure in scoffing at the natives. "Look at that!" we say, oh so worldly and superior. "Why, when I was in third grade I walked to school in two feet of snow."

Once, I think, because I'd missed the bus and Mom was about up to her ears with me. I don't remember it being uphill either way.

Meanwhile, back home, I'm annoyed to find that the weather forecast calls for a freeze tonight. Day before yesterday it was ninety degrees. Once again, the plants come inside, all 327,964,898 of them. Tomorrow they'll all go back out again, hopefully this time for good, or at least until December.

The bromeliad cluster from my ex-mother-in-law (this would be a band name, except it's much too long - perhaps one day I'll use it to title a novel) got all excited about the warm weather and is sending out several buds - so the expectant mommy is safely ensconced in the laundry room for the night. I'll have to get a picture when they bloom, because the flowers are strange and beautiful: bright red buds that bloom into electric blue blossoms edged with vivid yellow; alien, unearthly. Spikey, the crack weed from Corpus, produced a gigantic floral cluster about a month ago, and now has babies all over the flower bed. The aloes are burstingly fat and the ivies all need trimming. I love my potted garden, and I'm so glad it's a long weekend for us government-employee types: tomorrow I anticipate spending a happy day rearranging everyone in their proper places on the front porch.

Tonight it's cold, but tomorrow's another day. Tomorrow will be a good one. I'll make my garden grow.

Ready... Aim...

We had a fire drill at work today.

This one was different from the carefree, happy-go-lucky emergency drills I remember from the other job. During this drill, all my coworkers filed out of the building in as orderly a fashion as their bleeding eardrums would allow, then gathered meekly at our designated end of the parking lot to be counted by safety monitors in orange vests, committing only the most minor acts of vandalism on the way.

Cheap American cars and their poorly-mounted side mirrors!

As a wearer of the Sacred Orange Vest, I had advance warning of the fire drill. Only we were told, out of my entire work group, with exhortations of the highest confidentiality, so I thought I was being quite naughty by whispering it to Bill at break. "Oh yeah, they sent an email out to everybody in my division," he said.

He's so hard to impress.

I wore the safety vest, but I did not do the safety dance; perhaps that comes later, after I've worked here a bit longer. I've also been issued a flashlight and earplugs. I could have used those last night at the Stereolab concert. In fact, a full range of personal protective equipment would have been nice.

Don't get me wrong: Stereolab is awesome! But as noted before, getting bumped around in a crowd of your fellow Stereolab fans is virtually indistinguishable from being jostled by David Lee Roth aficionados. And no matter what's coming out of it, you really don't want to be within arm's reach of a 10-foot-tall amp. This, in short, is just too close.

The upside is that my ears were already too stunned to be further distressed by the fire alarm. And I can play the new Stereolab album when I practice my moves for the next fire drill!

Notes

Some years ago, I don't remember why, I discovered that the number one result for a Google image search on "not funny" was a Family Circus cartoon. I was awestruck. I thought to myself, wow. Is there anything Google doesn't know?

But here it is, four or five years later, and as amazing as modern technology is (ain't it though?), you still can't search for songs.

I mean, if you know the name of the song, or a fragment of the lyrics, of course you can. But you can't search for the music. I'm thinking of a very pretty folk song that a Celtic group I knew back in college used to perform. I can't remember any of the words. It might have involved a lovelorn maiden sitting down by the green something-or-other; but what Celtic folk song doesn't?

It went something like this:

(sh) La la la laa la-la la la laa
La la la. -la la tri-p-let laa
La la la la. -la-la-la la la la,
(sh) La la-la la la la la la. -la-la

Google is no help with this.

There's some musical notation software out there, and I could jot the melody down easily enough. But you can't search on a musical phrase, can you? I mean, you'd think they'd have algorithms that would allow for transposition - I don't know what key it was in - and for some liberties with the time signature.

But no. Here we are, lords of creation, arrogantly surveying the universe from the pinnacle of human accomplishment, and still if I want to find this song I'm reduced to going around humming at people like I'm some kind of Cro-Magnon or something.

It's not funny.

Crawlies

This video reminds me of my house, except my shoes are cuter.

Why are cockroaches so gross, anyway? Flies are dirtier. But if a fly lands on me, I just brush it away. I don't flip out and go hopping around the room squealing "ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew!!!!!!"

On the other hand, maggots are worse than cockroaches. Maggots are very, very, very bad.

There's a cricket in the house - it just landed on Eric's leg in the kitchen, then bounced away. He thought it was a cockroach at first and gave the manly equivalent of the abovementioned squeaking sound, then realized what it was and settled down. Why is a cricket so much better?

Do you think cockroaches get grossed out when they touch us? They do seem to avoid it if they can. Perhaps they do, but when cockroaches squeal "ew ew ew ew ew," it's too high-pitched for us to hear.

Or actually, a better question is do we hate cockroaches because we know they are destined to supplant us as the dominant life form on Earth? If so, did T. rex think that early little mammalian shrew-creatures were simply the most ghastly little squelchy things he'd ever seen?

I don't really mind the cockroaches living here as long as they stay out of my way, and kindly refrain from landing on my face while I'm sleeping, because this wakes me up, and not in a way at all conducive to proper cardiopulmonary functioning. And unlike Dave the raccoon, they don't knock over the garbage and eat up all the cat food.

Plus it's not nearly as easy to take out Dave with a shoe.

Remind Me

Is this not the coolest video ever?

I prefer this version of the song, though.

Soundtrack of My Life

This MySpace survey was so much fun I'm scootching it over here. Last time I did this was for an awesome survey that asked for your bank account number and your mother's maiden name, so you know it's a good one.

The premise: Open your music library, put the whole thing on shuffle and press play. Each song is part of your life's "soundtrack." The first song will be "Opening Credits," the next is "Waking Up," the next is "First day of School," etc.

Try it out! See what happens!

Beth:
The Soundtrack of My Life

Opening Credits:
"Taking Tiger Mountain" Brian Eno.
This is a slow, pensive song; much better suited to a romantic drama than the kitschy 60's sex romp I was hoping for. But at least it's quirky. We'll see how it goes.

Waking Up:
"Whistling in the Dark" They Might Be Giants
Okay. Maybe it's a comedy.

First Day of School:
"Hurt" Nine Inch Nails
Oh snap. Well, you know, sixth grade won't be easy, will it?

Falling in Love:
"Burning Down the House" Talking Heads
Watch out! You might get what you're after!

First Kiss:
"So This is Christmas" John Lennon
It might be. If I recall correctly, "So This Is Arbor Day" might be a more accurate description. Still, I can hardly wait for...

Losing Virginity:
"Think I'm in Love" Beck
Losing your virginity'll do that to ya, that's for damn sure.

Break-up:
"Voices Carry" 'Til Tuesday
Ruh-roh! Sounds like there's a married man involved. What was I thinking?! Geez, I was just sixteen.

Depression:
"Lovefool" The Cardigans
"You love me no longer, I know, and maybe there is nothing I can do to make you, do..." Sigh! It's so true! And so sad!

Graduation:
"Que Onda Guero" Beck
And when I graduate, I move to the barrio and start hanging with some vatos. Hey, let's go to Cap'n Cork. They got the new Yanni cassette!

Driving Song:
"Fuckin' in the Bushes" Oasis
So I drive fast. You would too, if you lived in Texas, had no air conditioning, and were chronically late to everything. Now get the eff outta my way, beeYOTCH!

Fight Song:
"Earthquake Weather" Beck
I can't think of any way this is a fight song; but then, I'm really more of a lover.

Okay, a dancer at least.

I don't know! Just don't punch me.

Getting Back Together:
"Yeh Yeh" They Might Be Giants
No No! Don't go back! As I've mentioned before, going back to an ex is just like putting on dirty underwear that's been sitting in the hamper for a week.

We'll take this one as ironic.

Wedding:
"Turn Around" They Might Be Giants
"I was out by myself in the graveyard/I was doing an interpretive dance/When I felt something heavy and pointed/Strike me in the back of my neck/Then the ghost of my dance instructor/Pushed me down into an open grave/And as dirt rained down, she played the xylophone, and sang me this song:/Turn around, turn around/There's something there to be found/Turn around, turn around/It's a human skull on the ground/Human skull on the ground/Turn around..."

Fair enough.

Birth of First Child:
"I've Got My Mind Set on You" George Harrison
Remind me to remove this song.

Final Battle:
"Chains of Love" Erasure
Apparently my final battle will be staged against my approximately 367,482 gay friends.

I will lose.

Death Scene:
"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" Culture Club
In context, this seems like a fairly stupid question.

Funeral:
"White Room" Cream
I don't actually know what this song is about, but it's Cream and it's the late sixties, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say drugs. Probably NyQuil. I should've known!

Ending Credits:
"I Say a Little Prayer for You" Burt Bacharach
You can always count on Burt!

Remain Calm

I don't want to alarm you, but felt you ought to know that Ferrante & Teicher once recorded a scintillating two-piano rendition of Macarthur Park that will leave you wanting to leave more than just a cake out in the rain, if you know what I mean, and it's available from iTunes and LimeWire, just to name a couple of otherwise mostly legitimate online services.

Yeah, I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight either.

Hope Springs Eternal

Rumor has it - ah, the joys of gossip! - that the panicmonger got chewed out by her boss last week for micromanaging her people into the ground, not letting them just do their jobs, and being generally difficult to deal with. Rumor has it that she's stated she's going to make serious efforts to find another position.

I understand a little bit about how the panicmonger thinks. I think that people who are naturally stress-prone tend to assume that relaxed, calm, laid-back people just don't care. If you're not freaking out, you must be a slacker. So she redoubles her efforts, again and again and again, to put more pressure on everyone, to make sure she knows exactly what everyone is doing all the time, to drive everyone else into the kind of panicked frenzy that she herself feels is the appropriate reaction to whatever situation is at hand.

Trying to soothe her, and telling her everything is under control, only reinforces her belief that she's the only one making any effort, and the poor woman - who is not necessarily unfriendly by nature - really can't understand why everyone is turning against her. And I really do feel bad for her.

All that said, boo-frickin'-hoo. I hope the door doesn't hit her in the ass on the way out.

Anyway, this was encouraging news for a Friday, even if it didn't end so well; but a good night's sleep makes pretty much everything look better, and damn I have some really sweet friends, and it's a beautiful morning. Chirping birds and everything! And my honeysuckle is still not quite dead!

This morning I sent an email to the music director of TEMP. Let me in... let me iiinnnnnnnnnnn!!!

Keep Going

I love this video. It reminds me of work!

I can't believe I just said that.

No One Can Hear You Scream

Someone appears to have been axe-murdered in one of the fifth-floor practice rooms of the UT Music Building.

Or perhaps some hapless singer tried applying a long-unused, slightly scratchy throat and a mezzo range* to a bit of light Schubert, and her lungs forcibly ejected themselves against the wall in protest. Stranger things have happened. Or the music-college legend about razor blades planted between the keys might have played out in real life. Or someone was practicing the bombarde with such gusto that the piano student in the next cubicle had no choice but to slice him to death with his own sheet music, which I think is perfectly understandable, and if you've ever heard anyone play the bombarde you will probably agree.

Whatever made it, it's a little unnerving to sit in a tiny, airtight, soundproofed room, in a mostly empty building, with a gigantic rust-colored splattery stain on the wall. You never know who or what could be hiding in the piano.

At least it was an upright.

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*My voice has a very nice bottom, but it's a bitch trying to find art songs that fit.