On Spaghetti and Billiards and Conducting....

'Trying to make 'zee love without 'zee woody,
is like shooting pool with wet spaghetti"
Pepe LaPieu

Fear not, gently reader, for Modem's Woody is strong (read my 'Stalevo Horndog' entry) - why I'm hornier than a two-peckered billygoat roaming free in the cialis-patch, truth be told!. Yet the quote from the grand Warner philosopher has new meaning to me as I wrestle with the existential 'is-ness" of what these changes in control of basic bodily movement translate to in day to day experience. These days, I am hyper aware of how having the Heebie Jeebies (i.e., the disease formerly known as Parkinsons) challenges me in playing and conducting music. As for conducting:

Conducting, in its essence, is all about communication of intention through gesture. Movement disorders, Parkinson's for example, strike at the medium between the two - and as they challenge your ability to control the nuance of your own gesture, so to do they impact your ability to shape and mold the fine gesture and subtlety of movement of the 5 or 20 or 40 musicians in front of you. As a frequent keyboardist/conductor for musical theater, it's been truly dismaying to witness the loss of specific skills once taken for granted - i.e., playing the keyboard with the right hand while conducting with the left - grow undependable, risky and
atrophied. Any yet, you struggle, you find ways to compensate -

some truly amazing histories come to mind in this regard, foremost among them Django Reinhard, Hot Jazz Gypsy Guitarist who made his mark with only three grotesquely fused digits on his left hand, the result of a high-intensity cellophane fire that left him maimed. And, in a wider perspective, we're all on our way out once we've made our way in, so heebie jeebies or not, it all comes back to making the most of what you've got while you've got it.
.......carpe 'freaking diem!