Day 170 Where Are You?

May 28, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70^th years where I write and illustrate a blog on each day’s gift.)

We picked up a young Couch Surfer at the train station today. He is Indonesian but has lived in Germany for ten or more years. He wanted to see Annapolis and so we took him there where we visited the State House and the harbor area. I told him about Alex Haley’s novel Roots and showed him the statue at the harbor and the quotes from his novel. Later, David cooked a good dinner as usual and then I decided to fill the bird feeders. While I prefer to merely fill the feeders from the birdseed bag, David insists on first filling empty soda liter bottles and then filling the feeders from these bottles. It makes no sense at all to me but his weird way of doing things led me to a new discovery.

I playfully struck one of the empty soda bottles on the table and it resonated with a lovely sound. Curious, I tried another and another. Although the plastic bottles appeared the same to the eye, they produced different sounds to the ear. A fourth one made a most unpleasant sound so I held onto the three and determined they produced these notes: B-D-F.

 I began to play three-note tunes with these bottles. B-F-D sounded like, “Where are you?” B-B-B-F-D sounded like, “Where the hell are you?” Our Couch Surfer, Charles, and I took turns playing three-note original songs to the accompaniment of giggles. I think I’m going to call my new style repurposed music.

 

After a day of knee pain, I was glad when something so simple could spark creativity and smiles. That’s what I choose to remember about today.

My gift today was three musical plastic bottles.

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You can find links to my other posts on this project here:

http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html