Post by Lady Mage on Oct 10, 2005 21:21:05 GMT -5
The Music Center
Rating: pg
The basement of Music Center is quite a loud and busy place. There are drums, violins, pianos, flutes, and guitars being played at the same time. It is interesting to watch the different kinds of people that come to the same place for one thing—music.
I sit in the basement waiting for my flute lesson to begin. The familiar damp smell of the cellar meets my nostrils. Above, in the store, I hear the bells jangle as the next batch of students arrive for their time slot. Sitting across from me is a business-like man with a laptop, talking to his son who has just gotten out of his lesson, and waiting for his other son to finish. Next to him sits a slightly frazzled looking woman with red hair who is sewing small pieces of fabric together by hand. I’ve talked to her before, and she is doing it for a sewing class she’s taking down by the old mill. The business-like man’s other son comes out from his drum lesson, and asks him if he’s connected to the internet. The man says no, that he has to have a phone connection, and he doesn’t have it here. The other son is now upstairs asking Kate, the owner of Bethel Music Center, what the closet directly in front of the stairs is for. Kate answers him saying that it is sometimes used for a classroom in a pinch, but used mostly for storage.
A goth around seventeen comes down the stairs. He is wearing a black, baggy, sleeveless tee shirt that goes down to the middle of his thighs, showing off fading fake snake tattoos on both of his rather large shoulder muscles. He has on khaki cargo shorts so baggy that each leg hole is almost as big as the waist hole. The shorts are so long that they touch his ankles with no difficulty. He is listening loudly to hard rock on his earphones, so loudly that we in the waiting room can hear every word. A guitar strapped over the back completes the effect. The minute he gets down, he starts bugging the guy sitting next to me about joining his band, without turning his music off, and practically shouting, then stops suddenly to read the poster above my head. “WANTED” it blares in red ink “BANDS OF THE BEST QUALITY” before continuing in a slightly more calm way, now in black ink, “Do you have the greatest band we’ve ever”—here ‘ever’ is crossed out and substituted with ‘never’— “heard? Upload your original song onto guitar.com, and if you’re good, you might just win one of three fabulous prizes!” The goth is about to turn to his friend the drummer when his teacher comes out of the classroom all the way down the hall. The teacher, I note, has even longer shorts than the goth does.
A minute later, the Japanese piano teacher comes out of classroom one, and looks for his next pupil. You can tell he’s looking for someone that he hasn’t met yet. When he sees no girl about five years old, he retreats back into his classroom, and a very complicated version of “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin soon emerges, made even louder by the fact that he left his door open so that he will know when his student comes. In classroom two, I hear my teacher, Sarah talking to a new girl about her embouchure. The new girl tries to play again, but still doesn’t get the sound right, and Sarah tells her to look at her mouth while she plays the note. In classroom three, the violin teacher, Tara, pops her head out of the classroom to see if her next student is here yet, then shuts the door and continues teaching her previous student.
The bells tinkle above, two times, and soon the five year old new piano student comes down the stairs, clutching tightly to her mother’s hand. The piano teacher comes out and introduces himself, then takes the girl into the classroom with him, asking what she can play. The girl answers “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Soon those of us waiting, that is, the mother of the girl, the goth’s drummer friend, and the quilting lady, hear it issuing from the piano, in the way it only can when a five year old plays it.
The next violin student, Teresa, comes down to the basement where all of us are gathered. She is wearing an obnoxiously low shirt with extremely tight hipster jeans and has about four inches of skin showing between her jeans and her shirt. Her hair is dyed blonde, and she leans against the rough unfinished wall. Needless to say, the drummer is looking avidly at her, until his apparently amorous thoughts are interrupted when his teacher comes out. The drummer shakes himself and follows the teacher into the fifth classroom, only to find that he left his drum sticks in the waiting area.
When Tara pops her head out again, and sees Teresa, the student from before hastily packs up and goes to say hello to her mother, the quilting lady. Tara sees my Krispy Kreme hat and starts talking to Teresa animatedly, asking if she’s ever had one of their doughnuts. When Teresa shakes her head as they’re going into the classroom, I can hear her saying inside the classroom how great Krispy Kremes are, and that she can’t believe Teresa has never had one before. It takes a while for the quilting lady and her daughter to pack up all the quilting pieces, but eventually they leave.
I begin to wonder how far over Sarah will go with her new student, but just as I’m thinking that, the new student comes out with her mom, and Sarah waves me in. “Sorry about that,” she says, “She was new, and I just had to tell her some basics.” I grin, remembering my first lesson, and Sarah laughs before continuing, “I’ll go over with you- my next student called and told me she was going to be late.” We start playing “A Summer Evening”- a duet as beautiful as its name implies.
Now I’m among those performing for the people in the waiting room.
Rating: pg
The basement of Music Center is quite a loud and busy place. There are drums, violins, pianos, flutes, and guitars being played at the same time. It is interesting to watch the different kinds of people that come to the same place for one thing—music.
I sit in the basement waiting for my flute lesson to begin. The familiar damp smell of the cellar meets my nostrils. Above, in the store, I hear the bells jangle as the next batch of students arrive for their time slot. Sitting across from me is a business-like man with a laptop, talking to his son who has just gotten out of his lesson, and waiting for his other son to finish. Next to him sits a slightly frazzled looking woman with red hair who is sewing small pieces of fabric together by hand. I’ve talked to her before, and she is doing it for a sewing class she’s taking down by the old mill. The business-like man’s other son comes out from his drum lesson, and asks him if he’s connected to the internet. The man says no, that he has to have a phone connection, and he doesn’t have it here. The other son is now upstairs asking Kate, the owner of Bethel Music Center, what the closet directly in front of the stairs is for. Kate answers him saying that it is sometimes used for a classroom in a pinch, but used mostly for storage.
A goth around seventeen comes down the stairs. He is wearing a black, baggy, sleeveless tee shirt that goes down to the middle of his thighs, showing off fading fake snake tattoos on both of his rather large shoulder muscles. He has on khaki cargo shorts so baggy that each leg hole is almost as big as the waist hole. The shorts are so long that they touch his ankles with no difficulty. He is listening loudly to hard rock on his earphones, so loudly that we in the waiting room can hear every word. A guitar strapped over the back completes the effect. The minute he gets down, he starts bugging the guy sitting next to me about joining his band, without turning his music off, and practically shouting, then stops suddenly to read the poster above my head. “WANTED” it blares in red ink “BANDS OF THE BEST QUALITY” before continuing in a slightly more calm way, now in black ink, “Do you have the greatest band we’ve ever”—here ‘ever’ is crossed out and substituted with ‘never’— “heard? Upload your original song onto guitar.com, and if you’re good, you might just win one of three fabulous prizes!” The goth is about to turn to his friend the drummer when his teacher comes out of the classroom all the way down the hall. The teacher, I note, has even longer shorts than the goth does.
A minute later, the Japanese piano teacher comes out of classroom one, and looks for his next pupil. You can tell he’s looking for someone that he hasn’t met yet. When he sees no girl about five years old, he retreats back into his classroom, and a very complicated version of “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin soon emerges, made even louder by the fact that he left his door open so that he will know when his student comes. In classroom two, I hear my teacher, Sarah talking to a new girl about her embouchure. The new girl tries to play again, but still doesn’t get the sound right, and Sarah tells her to look at her mouth while she plays the note. In classroom three, the violin teacher, Tara, pops her head out of the classroom to see if her next student is here yet, then shuts the door and continues teaching her previous student.
The bells tinkle above, two times, and soon the five year old new piano student comes down the stairs, clutching tightly to her mother’s hand. The piano teacher comes out and introduces himself, then takes the girl into the classroom with him, asking what she can play. The girl answers “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Soon those of us waiting, that is, the mother of the girl, the goth’s drummer friend, and the quilting lady, hear it issuing from the piano, in the way it only can when a five year old plays it.
The next violin student, Teresa, comes down to the basement where all of us are gathered. She is wearing an obnoxiously low shirt with extremely tight hipster jeans and has about four inches of skin showing between her jeans and her shirt. Her hair is dyed blonde, and she leans against the rough unfinished wall. Needless to say, the drummer is looking avidly at her, until his apparently amorous thoughts are interrupted when his teacher comes out. The drummer shakes himself and follows the teacher into the fifth classroom, only to find that he left his drum sticks in the waiting area.
When Tara pops her head out again, and sees Teresa, the student from before hastily packs up and goes to say hello to her mother, the quilting lady. Tara sees my Krispy Kreme hat and starts talking to Teresa animatedly, asking if she’s ever had one of their doughnuts. When Teresa shakes her head as they’re going into the classroom, I can hear her saying inside the classroom how great Krispy Kremes are, and that she can’t believe Teresa has never had one before. It takes a while for the quilting lady and her daughter to pack up all the quilting pieces, but eventually they leave.
I begin to wonder how far over Sarah will go with her new student, but just as I’m thinking that, the new student comes out with her mom, and Sarah waves me in. “Sorry about that,” she says, “She was new, and I just had to tell her some basics.” I grin, remembering my first lesson, and Sarah laughs before continuing, “I’ll go over with you- my next student called and told me she was going to be late.” We start playing “A Summer Evening”- a duet as beautiful as its name implies.
Now I’m among those performing for the people in the waiting room.