"Let All that are to Mirth Inclined" (a 17th Century English Broadside)

"Taking a break this year and not playing anywhere for Christmas," I told her. She got that look you imagine a deer having in a spotlight (they prosecute for that around here ...) and said, "But, what about here? Next Saturday?" It was my turn to play Jane the Doe. Despite absolutely no conversation on the subject being had, she thought I would somehow know that, just because I had played for their Christmas open house before, I would be playing again this year. I explained that it wasn't a standing date. She asked what she was to do and, being the eternal wimp, I said I would look at my music and see if I could throw something together. Well, I can't. I've played that Christmas music until I nearly loathe some of it and I just don't have time in a week to knock together a program of something fresh and sparkling (the arrangements, if not the tunes). Not with a fistful of doctor appointments for Mom, attending to the lamentable depredations of the minor villains of the area, and haring off to Nashville at the end of the week for a board meeting. There is simply no time. But how do you explain this to someone who thinks we just pick up those instruments and play? "You've played that stuff before. You know it," she pleaded. Yes, I thought, and you tap danced in the third grade; you want to try it again now in front of a bunch of strangers? I suppose the syllogism is not really sound, but it was all my tired brain could come up with at the time.

I went to a friend's house to hunt through her Christmas music looking for something new. She had some lovely things I would like to learn, but it just ain't gonna happen before next Saturday. In a fit of Magpie Mania, I ordered my own copies of her music (wonderful books by Suzanne Guldimann), but I shall learn them for my own pleasure and not for next Saturday. There are four harps in the house now, I use that as an excuse for more music ... (and as my friend says, "Sheet music doesn't go off like bananas or milk.")

In October a girlfriend and I go to Harp Camp in Asheville, NC. The retreat facility where it is held is simply lovely. They have undergone a rigorous renovation and redecoration program to better appeal to an aging population of conference and retreat-goers. I think our median age is rising precipitously and we no longer finding it richly amusing to try to scramble into bunk beds or sleep several to a room in them. My girlfriend and I always share a room, but that is because we are of an age and have reached that interesting place in our lives at which we are too old to do things we really don't want to do. So we get up in time for breakfast at the dining hall, but we skip workshops if we want to and loiter in the vendors' hall as long as we wish. We listen carefully to what the presenters have to say, but we don't hang on every word as we might once have done in the pursuit of perfect knowledge (it's not to be had). Best of all, we've both learned to try things and feel comfortable in saying, "Well, that's something I'm glad I tried and will NEVER do again!" Experience is seldom wasted ... except when your computer is acting like a sulky three year old child and you're trying to talk to an IT person on the other side of the world and you don't speak a word of Bengali or Hindi. But I digress.

I suppose then, this is all by way of saying that I shall tell her that I simply can not play for her on Saturday, but I would love to play next year. If she gives me some advance notice.