Just Between Heitor and Me (nobody else reads this crap,anyway.)

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of music I’ve haven’t heard before; in some cases, as in “Nuevo Tango” composer Astor Piazolla, never even heard of before. What a luxury to come to something cleanly, and what joy when I discover it’s not another goddamn piece by Mozart.

Right now, it’s the music of Heitor Villa-Lobos. I’ve heard a couple pieces by him before, but with no effect. Out of an urge to just listen to something different, I picked up a discount CD of “Villa-Lobos Orchestral Music”. I’m particularly taken with two: The exotic “Alvorada na Floresta Tropical Ouverture” (“Dawn in a Tropical Forest Overture”) and the lush “Bachianas Brasilieras #2.”

I like putting new music on in the background several times while doing other things. My ears get attuned to the music and slowly begin to notice the music. I listen closer each time. If I’m particularly interested, I’ll listen with headphones and watch the timings, so I know where the beginning, middle and end are, and how the piece moves from start to finish.

I have many pieces of music that are like good friends: entertaining and familiar, yet never failing to intrigue me with some new facet.

It is, in fact, an imitation of acquaintances turning to affections and, sometimes, to intimacy. The “running credits” of my life is a cast of hundreds of people who I did not notice come into my life, sometimes at first did not particularly care much for, only for them to become important somehow in this “biopic.”

But then there is the “Love” – that Special Love, (Yeah, I grew up on those manipulative, sappy car radio songs, too,)---- The Love Long Gone. It is easy to go back to that exact moment I saw her for absolutely the first time: the whole painting of that moment, framed and well-lit. Consequently, I can remember the exact moment before that moment, that point in time when I heard a door open and turned, after which I would never NOT know her again.