one of my favorite bloggers Zulieka loses a student, but gains a great post

Although she had taken piano for six years, she was playing pieces that some of my first year students play. But the miracle about her playing was that she had both a beautiful tone and a very convincing musicality. In fact, of all my students, even the very advanced, she was the most sensitive. She had an ability that had nothing to do with coordination or memory, and I am stumped to explain where that ability came from.

She could not sight-read, and she could not pick out a tune by ear. She had to learn everything by route repetition, note by note. We worked on Bach’s Prelude in C, WTC I, a piece that I picked for her because it was “real” music, not the piddly five-finger patterns from her beginner books, and although it is a very difficult piece in some respects, the left and right hand do not have more than one note to play at a time so that coordination between hands is not an issue. It took most of a year, but when she had it memorized, her personal interpretation was stunning. She created a whole different environment in the musty basement studio, and I held my breath so I could get all the juice of the sounds she made. After three hours of listening to the superficial banging and plunking of students before her on Tuesdays, she brought me music. I fell in love with her.

Shes been blogging since Dec 2003, beautifully.

Read the whole post here.

one of my alltime favorite bloggers, Zulieka,

paints a dark picture of her life as a mother and a quasi-wife.

quasi because i dont think she married her man, although i could be wrong, and her blog could be like mine: quasi true.

either way, she’s not showing the most sunniest of dispositions right now:

When Freddy comes back from the graveyard shift, we are still in bed. We hide under the covers, and Lita calls out for him to find us. He smells like machines and oil, metallic and burnt. He drinks a beer and washes last night’s dishes. Then I slowly figure out who I am and what I am doing here, and reward myself with a piece of bitter chocolate from the cupboard while Lita gobbles up her cereal.

When I come home from work, Lita and Freddy are in bed asleep. She is still wearing her day clothes, and has not brushed her teeth or washed her face. I carry her to her own room and she cries a bit before plugging her mouth with her thumb. Then I am alone, and I don’t know what to do.

it’s weird, i dont recall her so down about nebraska when she lived there, in fact when she moved to mass with the family i thought she’d love it. but that doesnt seem to be the case. either way, you should all bookmark and subscribe to her brilliant blog Zulieka Unstrung. it’s not always for the whole family, but it is consistently well-written – like a finely played piano.

the only thing that i dont like about Z’s blog is that you can’t leave comments to tell her how rad she is. our pal Keira-Anne who also runs one of my favorite blogs, is quite different. there you can leave comments in fact today Keira is soliciting questions that she will answer in a podcast, i believe, so after you read Zulieka, go over to Keira’s and ask her everything that youve always wanted to know.

congratulations, kansas

zulieka giving kansas her love, look out boston here she comes on your ncaa college basketball championship. therefore congratulations william s burroughs who shot his wife in the head and killed her and was still allowed to do drugs and write and live free, unlike oj whose gloves didnt fit. etc.

but most of all congratulations to zulieka one of my favorite bloggers of all time because she has a grace about her writing and a sensuality and an intelligence that is completely overlooked when the lost try to explain the varied nuances of blogging.

the problem with journalists and authors and even other bloggers when they write about bloggers is they completely ignore the breadth and variety of the 100+ million blogs. they pretend that everyone is either matt drudge or dooce or some lonewacko banging away in his mothers basement. truth of the matter is there are as many different types of blogs as there are snowflakes. and zulieka’s is one of the snowiest.

for years i have had the pleasure of watching her fascinating life unfold and yesterday i read that she is moving from kansas to massachusetts(!) apparently her mother bought her a house. so look out mass, z, lil baby z, and freddy are headed your way.

but first, heres what zulieka noticed about the game, something that i didnt see since i was working.

Then after screaming I felt bad for the Memphis underdogs, who came out of nowhere and really did deserve the win, even though the cameras shied away from their cheerleaders the whole time making us wonder about the implications of that absent footage until finally an accidental shot of a female trombone player from their side cleared it up. Wow, Kansas girls aren’t exactly hot but at least there’s been some circulation in the gene pool.

This is typical of me, and it’s happened before at an auction and at casino. I love to win at any cost. What a fantastic game, what lovely tattooed boys. Yes, goddamn it, I was watching it too, at the same time you were.

for some reason i felt sad that she was moving away from kansas. i have no idea why. its more likely that i will find myself near boston than kansas, but i guess i always thought that kansas was better with zulieka than without her.

and maybe i think that boston doesnt deserver.

did i say that outloud?

i know sk reads zulieka

Zulieka so maybe she will come out of the wordwork and update her blog now that z has graced her blog with a portrait.

kansas do you realize there are milfs like her in your midst? actually ive heard some very nice things about kansas but mostly about its bbq and women do know where to find good food so it wouldnt surprise me if the rumors were true.

today i was trying to find some books to send to africa. xxx, mostly.

chris requested some anais nin but i dont know how you properly pronounce her first name and just like for record stores i get political when i choose where i will buy my books.

i believe that life would be better with a lot of small record stores and book stores and less gigantor ones and deep discounts at soulless places like best buy and wal*mart.

if i was president i would run under the Class platform – “no it might not be 100% constitutional, but its classy.”

therefore i would ban cd sales and book sales in any building larger than a small one bedroom apartment. stores would be forced to specialize. experts would crop up. people would end up with a wider variety of styles to enjoy. life would be classier.

and then when no one was looking i would sneak in a law that said theres no such thing as nudity being against the law.

so i first went to the fancy independent book store in los feliz, the one next to the movie theatre, but they didnt have anything by her far as i could tell and i was too embarrassed to ask the people who worked there because i didnt want them to think know i was a perv reading anais nin (“sure it’s a gift for your friend in africa. my friend on pluto thinks youre a lying sack of doo.”) and 2. i didnt want them to know that i didnt know how to pronounce her name. it was very quiet at the time in the book store yet eerily packed for no. good. reason.

so i went to the super independent used bookstore on hollywood blvd a block away from wacko. and there was a black woman sitting on a chair reading the newspaper. and i looked around and there didnt seem to be any order to anything and i found a little book of stories by eudora welty that i suddenly had to have and i asked the woman where i could find some anais nin and she said who and i said uh-nay-issss nin.

and she said one minute, and she walked outside and went next door and a minute later a black dude came limping in and he didnt know who the hell i was talking about either and he walked me to a few shelves and he said heres where the biographies are and limped back out to where something was more interesting.

and i looked and looked and paid the lady who gave me no bag or receipt because im green and i went to wacko and couldnt find it and there it was on amazon marketplace which is probably Barnes n Noble in disguise but what can you do

ring ring my home phone said which is funny because i thought i had turned off its ringer.

hello?

a womans voice said did you watch entourage? my voice said yes. her voice said if you were vincent would you bang the woman who just helped fund your dream movie. i said uh. she said, her husband is telling you to fuck her. would you? they just gave you $60 million dollars.

and i said because theres no way that the Lord would think that someone would seriously pay 60 million dollars for one session of sexual activity then it cannot be considered prostitution, therefore it doesnt go against the bible other than adultry but the husband is almost demanding it and he is sorta your boss and its hbo so yeah id do it.

and she screamed WRONG ANSWER and hung up.

hi america

did you miss me? i missed you.

today was my first day at my new job. i was nervous as hell cuz this is a kickass company and they mean business.

i barely slept at all last night.

i was up till 3am waiting for rodney on the roq to play tsar and he didnt do it even after i called him up and he answered(!) and i made my request and he said he’d play it. maybe he couldnt find it.

then i kept waking up throughout the night seeing what time it was, then i got up early and put quarters in the meter and i took my shower and shaved my dumb bald head and made it into the office with enough time to take a disposable razor to my head for a few stray hairs behind the ears. thank god for 8 minute commutes.

everyone there is awesome. everyone is smart and young and selfmotivated and sharp and ontop of it. its insane.

i barely had time to check my gmail let alone take my two government mandated 15-minute breaks so i dont know what im going to do about this blog.

what i might do is write two things at night for a little while because i really should have lunch with the ladies (its pretty much an all-female workplace, other than the two IT dudes, im the only dude) because its really the only time for us to be semi-social. which means i cant blog at lunch.

maybe i can write two things at night and during the day i can put a picture up and have you write about it or give me requests about what i should write about when i get home at night.

problem is, i have homework!

i was in two meetings today with the owners. that never happens. one of them was just me and this other girl who brainstormed with them for what seemed like 10 minutes but was really an hour. it was awesome. i really wish that i had taken some marketing or advertising classes in school cuz im not sure what angle they want me to take my ideas. so tonight after i write this im going to give them 5-7 ideas about this one project – from different angles.

ive never had a more fun first day at work in my life.

and i love the fact that everyone swears.

but i promise you this blog may change slightly, but i will never give up on it. you have all given me so much and i want to give back. i will figure it out.

the pic above is of zulekia and child + matthew good podcast from last night + splink