Rob and I went to see Laurie Anderson’s new piece, “Homeland†at the Rose Theater. It was great to see what she is doing these days. I was moved by the sincerity of her songs and loved her quirky ways of storytelling. There were a couple of parts where she put an electronic effect on her microphone and her voice was transformed into a deep male voice. Pretty hilarious. She would talk about politics in a light manner at these moments. She had some great transitions. One of them, she was wearing a pair of white sunglasses with a small microphone attached to it. She was hitting her head side to side and biting her teeth together. The mic could pick up these sounds and it created a really booming rhythmic line.
On our way back to the train we passed by a piano shop and saw three toy pianos in their window. One of them looked like such a gem! It was an antique Winton. (I’ve actually never even heard of that brand.) It is an upright and you can look into the piano because there isn’t a front board on the instrument. It looked like they were felt hammers instead of metal hammers. My fingers were itching! The legs of the instrument were ornate and curved. ‘m returning on Monday to try it out.
I noticed that Rob had placed the bird’s nest we found in Bloomington on top of the smallest toy piano I own. We found the nest on the sidewalk on his last day in Bloomington. We knew that Bloomington is a special place to us, so we thought bringing our “nest†from Bloomington to New York would be a nice symbol. I couldn’t help but to find the nest really large on top of the tiny toy piano. This particular piano has a gold trim, no black keys (they’re painted on), and the white keys are even too small for my fingers. Only a baby could play it! There’s also a music box mounted on the back. Oddly enough, this piano produces a lot of low sounds because the high-pitched notes create a lot of undertones. I thought it was a funny image, so I wanted to share it.