A Communal Piano
This went out yesterday as issue 9 of The Angelo Report, a weekly newsletter published every Sunday afternoon.
There’s a big chain bookstore in Canada called Indigo, and its downtown Montreal store features a little coffee shop with some tables and chairs as well a somewhat-awkwardly-placed baby grand piano.
It’s a strange thing, probably a vestige from when the place opened and was paying someone to come in and play for a few hours a day, maybe. Probably still there because it’s ridiculously expensive to remove a large piano. I dunno. It’s my story, so I can retcon the facts as I see fit.
Anyways, yeah. There’s a piano in a downtown bookstore near the in-store coffee shop. That’s the key, here.
And every time I go into that store, someone is sitting at that piano, playing. Some folks are more experienced at playing piano than others, sure, but there’s always a customer sitting there, tickling the ivories.
(I guess that means that the store pays to have someone come in and tune the piano, because it sounds fine.)
The net result is that live music fills the air. A communal piano and a little encouragement is all it takes. Little neighbourhood libraries have that same feel: a communal box that encourages you to take a book, to leave a book. There's no economic or political incentive, it's just one person sharing art with others.
It feels like these things have gotten harder and harder to find lately. Or maybe I'm just spending too much time in the suburbs.
Around The Web
- Want to read stuff on the internet, but in print? The Printernet to the rescue! For $20, you can add five items and you'll receive a bound, printed copy in the mail.
- The GameBoy should have never succeeded, and yet it became a phenomenon precisely because it ignored tech specs and instead focused on the user experience. This video on its engineering is pretty eye-opening.
Thought Of The Week
September is my favourite month; it always feels like it's the time when the year actually starts for me, partly because a) it's my birthday month, but mostly b) the September school-year kickoff has been beaten into my head for literal decades.
Every year I think about what I want to set as the intention for the coming year, and every year it's some variation of “get your shit together, already.” But as I get older, I realize that I mostly do have it together. Mostly.
Anyways, I’m not doing “47 pieces of advice from my 47 years,” because that’s usually BS that doesn’t make sense to folks without a largely overlapping lived experience. Instead, a single suggestion:
Be a xenophile.
Love things that are different. Cultures, languages, people, ideas. Live with curiosity, because it’s significantly more fun and rewarding than any other option.
And remember: curiosity requires patience. The world reveals its secrets at its own pace.