Tasks Are Things I Cannot Do

On New Year’s Eve, I ordered a pizza from Marcello’s on Castro for me and Tom, and then got into the shower. A couple of minutes later, the phone rang. I worried that it was Marcello’s, calling to confirm my order and that they would cancel it when I didn’t answer. A short while later, the phone rang again—two rings, meaning someone was at the front door.

I leaped out of the shower and tried to buzz the person in, presumably the pizza delivery person, but it didn’t seem to work. The phone rang again and again. Finally, I called Tom and asked (well, instructed) him to go downstairs and let the pizza delivery person in.

Then I listened to the earlier message, which was Marcello’s saying they were out of potato skins and giving me the new total for the order, so I got out that amount plus tip, and when I heard rustling at my door, opened the door a crack—I was still dripping wet, wrapped in a towel—and reached for the pizza.

The front end of the box entered my apartment, but when I tried to take it, there was some resistance, so I pulled harder, and then harder still.

I know I have at least one reader who is hoping I’m going to say the whole pizza slid out of its box and landed, cheese down, on the carpet. Well, it didn’t, but I could hear Tom giggling outside the door as, with one last mighty wrench, I wrested the pizza from the delivery person’s grasp and then slammed the door as hard as I could—it was instinctive; what the aitch ee double toothpicks is going on here?—and then, instantly remorseful, yelled, “Sorry!” I hope my tip made up for it.

Tom explained later that the poor fellow was trying to balance the big box and take the money and stash it somewhere, all of which required about three hands.

New year’s resolutions, besides being more patient when receiving a pizza: To take fewer cabs, and not to buy any more CDs. I did buy a couple of CDs in the past year on which every single song was good, such as The Best of Gino Vannelli and Seether’s Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces, but that was more the exception than the rule, so from now on, I’m just going to buy songs from iTunes.

Tonight, for the very first time in my life, I heard the music of Britney Spears! And I even bought one song: “Toxic.”

Yesterday I completed a task that had been on my list of things to do for 16 months, which was to figure out how to get a piece of music (a classical composition I wrote while in music school, for solo piano) from cassette tape into the iMac, so I could make an MP3 and send it to David and Lisa.

(At David and Lisa’s going-away party in late August or early September of 2007, guests were encouraged to bring an artwork to share, a poem or picture or song. I brought a recording of my piano piece, and David asked afterwards if I could make them a copy.)

I figured it would take five minutes and I’d be chagrined at having delayed for so long, but it did actually take a few hours and quite a bit of hair-pulling. In the end, I got it working, and learned how to edit the digital sound file to remove unwanted parts, which is very easy, and how to make it fade in and fade out.

I also tried making a recording from a vinyl LP and that also worked, though it doesn’t sound as good as the file that came from the cassette tape.

This piano piece was performed at a Friday noon recital at San Francisco State University, not by me, since I am a very junior-level pianist, but by a graduate student named Kerri Dillman, if I recall correctly. She did a great job, and afterwards, the piece received about 30 solid seconds of applause, all captured on the tape, so that is basically a tape of the happiest 30 seconds of my life.

Once I was done with this piece, I did the same for another piece of mine, for bassoon and tenor saxophone, and then, for just a moment, I had the crazy idea of sifting through my tapes and extracting everything worthwhile to digital files and junking the actual tapes, but I was able to cleanse my mind of this ludicrous plan right away.

It would just be way too much work. I might even listen to the digital files more than I listen to the tapes, but I’m still not going to do it, and I’m not going to get rid of a single one of my cassette tapes, either. I like to look at them and remember the sound of what’s on them.

As for vinyl LPs, I have been assured that there will always be turntables, because the true audiophile will always prefer to listen to records, so that part should be fine. I have all my LPs, too, from the first one I ever bought, the greatest hits of the Friends of Distinction.

I did learn something from having procrastinated for so long on my little recording project (I also made David a promised CD or three containing some metal and Todd Rundgren favorites), which is never to agree to do anything for anyone, including myself, ever again.

As Gertrude Stein said, or should have said, or could be imagined saying, “Tasks are things I cannot do.” (I think this line may come from a one-person show about G. Stein, so it's not original, but I don't know who the author is.)