I'm inclined to just link to my third of a hundred things about me post and leave it at that. In any case, I don't imagine I'll tag a bunch of other people. But maybe I can scare up some odd things.
RULES
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
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7 FACTS ABOUT ME
- I was kicked in the face by a horse when I was six, causing my two front upper teeth to exit the scene altogether (and the two on either side to be loosened). The knocked-out teeth were put back in, but eventually needed to come back out and be replaced with bridgework.
- I drink, at a minimum, a twelve pack of Diet Coke a day, and have done so for over 20 years running.
- I once worked for a year or so as an apprentice in a pipe organ building shop in St. Paul. I thought I might pursue this as a career, as I have a long standing passion for the history and construction (and sound) of the pipe organ. But I learned, to my chagrin if not my surprise, that the field is populated with intensely religious people, which rather dampened my enthusiasm (not at all for the instrument, but for a life's work in this environment).
- I did not take my first step toward training for my current profession until I was 27 years old.
- I was born a twin, but my brother died of SIDS at five months of age or so. He and I had different birthdays, with me being born before midnight on 28 June and him coming after the turn to 29 June.
- Though I used to be a fair runner (fair in consistency and dedication; I have always been slow), I have no athletic skill. I was on the junior high school swim team for a year, but was the only member not to show even a whit of improvement over the season. I likened my performance to pushing a sheet of plywood face-on through the water.
- I spent two or three years playing drums in a band in Minneapolis in the mid-80s. It was my first crack playing music of this genre (pop / rock), and I both wrote songs and tried my hand at singing, also my first attempts here. We weren't terribly good, but we had some cool ideas and there was potential if we put our backs into it. But I was quite into classical music by this time, and when it became clear that we needed to take the band and our individual responsibilities more seriously if we were to move ahead (that is, we needed to quit our jobs and really knuckle under), I pulled the plug on my involvement. I may regret this one day, but at present it's still the decision I would make again.
6 comments:
How was it that you developed a taste for pipe organs? And was it organ music that led you to the classical music world?
I was at work at the hospital for 15 hours today. I blame that for the very bad sentence above.
Heh.
Hey, if we condemn that sentence, my whole blog would receive the death penalty!
I broke off my drumming ambitions (surprisingly to even me) in my first or second year of college to self-study in classical music. And I was drawn, before I even began looking / listening, to the lugubrious, sustained tones of the organ. I knew nothing about the subject or of any of the instrument's great composers; I just craved that sound. I think I have an innate love / sense of harmony, and that's what the organ does.
I began by buying an LP or two and checking books on the organ out of the University's music library. And I was just drawn in by what I read and heard. That led to more books and LPs, which eventually led to Bach, who continues to overshadow all, and later to the French. That French school--Duruflé, Widor, Vierne, Fauré, Ravel, Debussy (along with Bach, of course)--is still the center of my musical world 25 years later.
I worked at a church that had an incredible pipe organ, and then I had a friend who made them in a small town in Iowa. I wish that I could remember where. He's a farmer by trade, but is an apprentice organ maker on the side. It's really an art.
And I've said this before, nothing much pleases me more than to be irreverent. I would have stayed in the field just to spice them up a bit.
I am sad that your twin brother died :(
Kate: I resonate a bit with your idea of being a thorn in some collective side. But it seems so futile when there is so little hope of a (to me) positive outcome. Still, I do appreciate a good pot-stirrer!
Canary: I wonder sometimes what would be different in my life had he lived. Do I have any "missing twin" things? Nah. But life would have been very different with an identical twin sibling, for sure.
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