Top Notch Concert

I just spent the evening at Massey Hall listening to Paco De Lucia, who is often considered the foremost practitioner of Flamenco Music. Period. I’m inclined to agree, and I think the MightyDoll does too. A few months ago, she didn’t know who De Lucia was when I mentioned that I had tickets, so I invited her along.

De Lucia started the concert by playing solo for a coupld of tunes. Gradually, more and more of his septet joined him as the set continued. The full group played a couple of tunes and really got things hopping before the break. When they resumed, the crowd was not disappointed.

The group consisted of a hand drummer, a 5 string bassist, a second guitarist, two singers, and one musician who played several instruments including Oud, Keyboards and Harmonica. To his credit, Paco De Lucia shared the spotlight with everyone in the band at least once during the night.

The music is certainly full of familiar sonorities to anyone who has heard Flamenco, and yet it went way beyond that to include forms from South America and Jazz. It’s a modern souped up version of something that is usually quite bound by tradition. This is not Spanish folk music by any means. It is music that pays homage to the tradition, and yet it’s forward looking and acknowledges other influences from the Latin Diaspora. (I’m getting pretentious now!)

Like Keith Jarrett says, truly great music is not merely a succession of notes, but a transformative experience. I would have to argue that Paco De Lucia is among that select few who can play at that level. I am going to be digesting this concert for several days.

*****

Eyeball Update

I went to the eye clinic this morning. For those of you who want to know, I am happy to report that my distance vision is almost normal now, and my colour perception continues to improve. I scored 8.5 out of 17 on the colour blindness test with my right eye. 10 days ago, this eye couldn’t spot the figures inside the field of coloured dots at all. My left eye is much better at 12 or 13 out of 17. Bright lights and sudden changes in lighting are still pesky, but improving nonetheless. At the end of a day staring at a monitor or being out in the sun for any amount of time results in the dimmer being turned down. I will just have to work fast and get a good pair of polarized sunglasses.

The doctor who originally saw me at the eye clinic was very pleased at how much my vision has improved. She said that it’s remarkable that someone with my symptoms could have made such a profound recovery. I guess things could have been a lot worse, and the doctors did a great job of masking their fears. They always said that I should make a full recovery, but I guess they had reservations despite their optimistic pronouncements. I am certainly glad they had as much hope as I did, and I’m even more glad that their expectations have been exceeded.

Next time I meet a pessimist, I’m going to kick his ass!

Lessons Learned

Blogger.com is getting too weird, so here it is: My first post on the new platform. The old othercat.blogspot.com is constantly hanging and not being very responsive. The interface here is much nicer to work with too, so I’ve decided to follow in Sassinak’s footprints. Her old blog moved here a few months back, and I keep wondering why I didn’t move sooner.  The deed is now done. I’m tired of being patient with blogger.com and their routine hangups.

Anyway, if you’ve followed me here from the old blog, you’ll have heard all about the loss and recovery of my vision in recent weeks. I can only say that the treatment has been largely a success so far. My prescriptions run out tomorrow, and no a moment too soon. The side effects have been quite a nuisance. I can’t say too many bad things about it, because I can see again. Two and a half weeks of being wound a bit tight is getting to me though. The simple things in life like a good nights sleep and a calm gastro-intestinal system will return. How nice.

I’m back to work, and glad to be so. It’s a little hard with the dim eyesight, but I must soldier on, and to tell the truth, I think I’ve got a newfound love of my life and work since my brief but intense introduction to blindness.

At the time, and even now, I felt like I was having some kind of surreal adventure. I certainly felt ill at ease because I couldn’t see, but I never felt frightened. It feels odd to say, but I took a third person view of the situation and was somewhat dispassionate about it. I certainly hoped, even at my darkest times, that my eyesight would improve. Despite that I was also mentally preparing for a radical change in my life in the event that I was rendered blind permanently. A kind of analytical pragmatism kept me in control of the situation.

One of the women in my Continuum class, among many others exclaimed “You must have been freaking out!” but it wasn’t the case. I replied that I couldn’t afford to. Perhaps it’s a sign of my improving mental stability in the last few years, but it’s also true. I suspect that if I lost my composure along with my eyesight, I’d have been a lot worse off.

Chomulungma has weird ways of teaching us lessons, and I guess this was my turn. I have certainly learned that keeping a cool head even in the most trying times is best. It will be up to me to see if the lessons will remain. The progress in my eyesight is slowing up, but still improving. I think the reserves of patience that I had during the worst of it will be still necessary in the coming weeks. None of the doctors nor I know how much better my eyesight will get. I suspect that according to the numbers, my vision will be fine, but I think I’m going to have a long uphill struggle to finally deal with natural and artificial light in all it’s varying intensities.

 It’s one thing to demonstrate seeing a letter on an eyechart at the appropriate distance, and another to cope with a bright sunny day for any duration. Making smooth transitions as conditions change will be my challenge. I think it’s going to be alright, but, at this stage in the game, I think I had better be prepared for a long haul back. It’s going to be a long interesting time.