For what I guess are two weeks and four days now I've been waiting for my instrument to arrive. I've been looking into music sheets, note tabs, I made my own tab to notes image, I bought a music sheet notebook to note songs for when I play, I listened to songs uknown to most people and played a virtual piano so I could get an approximation of the notes that are played so I could play in the instrument. I eagerly opened the mail tracking site and put in the code and did the captcha multiple times every day so I could maybe get the feeling that it is closer to being here, being home, being with me, bringing me the fullfillment I hope it has.
It's needless to say, whatever this thing is, it won't do that, realistically it'll likely be much, much lesser than what I hope it to be. It's not uncommon to me that something coming from overseas is underwhealming, frustrating, not as thought to be, I don't know or even understand much of why I put so much weigh onto it, I put so many dreams onto it, it's almost unfair to expect it to live up to those, even if what it has to do is not much at all, I just hope it is an instrument, my instrument, that it plays the notes as it should, when I put my fingers on all the right holes and blow it a C will come out in the 4th octave, maybe the 5th, and when I just hold it and blow it'll be an E on the next octave, that it looks kind of nice, that it sounds good enough, that it's not too small for my hands, nor too fragile for the same.
It left a neighbouring town today, at 10:27, heading to my town, it's not more than 2 horus away, I expected, though not fully, that it would arrive today, it's sent to my work and I'm there until 18:00. It didn't arrive, which was fine, I'm not upset about it or anything, I'm not sure why I'm upset, I wouldn't even be able to play it more than a few minutes before going to college, things feel weird now, maybe I just wanted something to hold, something warm even if not really, something to hold and feel understood by it, I think that's what it is, the echo, have feedback even if I'm alone, the line that separates being pathetic from being content with being alone, the feeling of being good enough.
Maybe you could get something from this that went over me, I hope so, every new paragraph here should be the last but I keep wanting to say more. Maybe this is enough.
Tomorrow I'll write how it goes
If it arrives.
Today is tomorrow and it has arrived today.
It's horrible, it sounds horrible, what I hoped for a C4 or a C5 is an E6, the C note comes out as an E. As Terrible news as this may be I'm at the moment not upset by it, I don't know why, maybe the "it has arrived" splash is still running, or maybe it's the other things I've done besides wait that still got some dopamine running in me. I'm bummed that it's pretty much unuseable besides looking kinda neat, but I'm not upset, I even feel myself smiling slightly, I'm not sure why. The moment finally arrived and it's extremely underwhealming, all I planned and hoped for just went out the window and I'm not upset, I don't understan that.
Maybe later it'll settle in and I'll know better, I'll be here later tonight either way.
1 hour later that smile faded away. Over 3 hours later than that I was woken up to the ending of Auditory Guidepost. Somewhere between that any sense of happiness or euphoria vanished, it's gone now, all gone. No happiness no contentness no fullfilment no sadness, anger, fear, anticipation, disappointment, soul, whatever the fuck. Gone. It's gone. Not just for that silly little piece of ceramics, pretty much everything, my emmotions just gave up. My mind just got tired of being let down, it's just sitting down now, looking at nothing, letting thoughts pass by like slow cars in the street. If it's hungry, it walks to the fridge, if there's no food it wants to it, it walks back to its place, sits down and stays there. Barely anything matters at this point, just doing the bare minimum, doing whatever it's asked of it, not complaining to not spend energy, just doing it right away, there's nothing else better to do. It's writing now because it's better than doing nothing, there's a lecture to pay attention to but that's more processing than I care to use right now, and it's prolonged simplicity, I can deal with it when the time comes.
...Has anyone ever read this far? Will anyone ever read these words I'm writing? There's many views overall, but... How deep do they go? How deep have you gone? I put a lot of myself into this. Not effort, but soul, I let it poor into this, it feels nice but it's all made with you in mind... I hope you are here... I hope anyone is...
Can you give me a sign if you are? Anything?
Hey I bet you're tired of hearing me talking about a dumass flute, and honestly so am I, but the seek continues... However, there's a twist this time. It' minor as far as right now, but it's certainly more interesting than those other two... jeez it's four actually, but regardless, here's some backstory:
The first time I ever knew what an ocarina was is around when I was 10 - 12, not really sure how old exactly. There's a fair downtown on sundays, I think I went there like twice ever, but kid me was with my family one sunday and there was one stall where a guy sold these round clay things, ocarinas, they were fairly cheap, 10 bucks (in brazilian real and I could be missremembering) for an instrument is not much at all, probably incentivized by my parents though I could be wrong on that too, I bought one. Note: I did not know how music works! I'd play that thing at random, make terrible noises with it and call it a day, so yeah pretty much wasted instrument. Few months after it probably broke, or I lost it or something and there's the end of that. I had a second one but that was short lived, not really important.
So about an hour and a half ago I'm looking online, looking through reddit for good ocarinas from amazon, and that memmory comes back, not the first time it did, I knew all of that all along, but I just found the design of it really ugly, it's one like this and I figured I'd find better ones online. But now after all of that, anything that makes an okay sound would be better, so I go searching...
I look up my town's name and ocarina on google, clicked the option for [must contain "ocarina"]. An article on that fair shows up, pretty much what I expected, ctrl+f "ocarina" on it brings me right into a paragraph about the stall of "Whistle Jack" (alias for this story) who, despite not having any whistles at the date of the article, does make ocarinas. Great, we got a name! A nickname, which is even better, much more specific and better for looking up online, so next up goes "Whistle Jack" on google.
A few results show up. The same article, some pictures from the article, a site called "Sindical Memmory 1930-1964"... Wtf that's odd... OH and an instagram account which translates to "@craftsmanship.glory". Bingo! Click. Right out of the gate, there's a "stories bundle" with no name other than Whistle Jack. There's 8 pictures. First one of him. A couple of his stall. One where he's teaching ceramics class to two kids. Then this one which, that's a ton of ocarinas! The next one really calls to me, at first thought, hey it's more ocarinas... but to the up right side, there's this one which is EXACTLY what I've been wanting! That shape, with some coloring it could become a really nice looking one! And if it sounds alright that's perfect! I just want it to sound nice... I just want it close to the notes...
There's a close up of a round ocarina, followed by two videos of him playing one of those flutes made by a ladder of "straws", which don't really give much but they're somewhat recent, 26 weeks, about half a year ago, considering last time I saw him was up to 10 years ago that's definitely recent... Cool . . . Now what?
Well... I found that, why not try to go further? Looking up Whistle Jack, I'll just call it WJ for short, there's 1 instagram account, 1 post, nothing of note.
Going back to google, there's... that sindical thing... clicking on that takes to a website, it claims to be the "Archaival Foundation and Memmory of Santos". It has a list of names in alphabetical order, broken down by groups of three and sometimes four, with every last name of them having a link to a PDF, none of them work tho, but in between all those 31 names is WJ. (I'll keep wrirting tomorrow, I gotta sleep).
Nevermind, doesn't fucking matter. Bought two ocarinas in the fair this morning, one from WJ and another from this other guy, both are extremely basic, very low note range, all holes are the same so I can only play 7 notes and the higher ones come out bad. I'm out of options at this point. I'm just tired, I'm drained... I just wanted a fucking ocarina.
