vote no to disorderly conduct

This morning, I found myself pressing my black RAZR to my ear in what can only be described as disbelief.

I could also describe it as fervently desiring my grip to be strong enough to crush my slim phone into six or seven chunks, but that would be redundant. Opposite me on the telephone line a prim female's voice told me that I was $200 overdrawn on my checking account, as sweetly as if she had just said "One lump or two, Mrs Merriweather?" at an octogenarians' Thursday tea. It was like having the dentist tell you that you unfortunately had somewhere in the vicinity of nine cavities, and hurt almost as much.

I was incredulous. Because like his teeth, Jeremy takes quite good care of his money.

The problem wasn't really that I was two hundred bucks in the red. That I could deal with.

What, you might ask, was the problem, then, that would drive a relatively sane pianist to wish to plunge his head into the nearest brick wall? The problem, children, was in the miscommunications between my dear bank and myself. I don't like when things don't match up. For example:

Think back to earlier that morning. I'm getting out of bed, preparing for the day, dealing with the hair-and-makeup crew, putting on my Armani tie and cuff links, making several expensive phone calls to high-end personages that make very high-end decisions, all that jazz. And in my haste, amidst the whirring and clicking gears and cogwheels in my brain that are processing the morning's doings, one thought bubble rises in precedence over the others. I remember, I'm running low on funds in my checking account. The logical question that follows is, how low? I put this thought into action, hurriedly tell Alessandro to stop with the hairspray for a moment, while I call the bank. The same prim voice that will later be the herald of the apocalypse sweetly tells me I have $100 remaining in my account. Alright. Good; not bad. Jeremy can withstand the temptations of dining on that $150 tuna steak tonight.

And so the day goes, me not spending any money with my debit card, not wrecking any Porsches, not making any progress with Herr Bach, and certainly not having tea with the Queen. (...of England, that is. I did have tea with the Queen of Hearts just now, actually.) All in all, a perfunctorily sunshiny day.

Until Catastrophe occurs, see example A, above, paragraph 1. If anyone knows how I mysteriously lost $300, don't hesitate to let me know. If you've stolen my identity, I'd like it back now. If there are any private investigators reading this that wish to perform a complementary investigation, that works too. Call my public relations secretary, Beatrice.

The moral of the story is things in life don't always exactly match up. Expect disorderly conduct from mere mortals, e.g. Prim-Female-in-the-a.m.'s story not quite matching up with Prim-Female-in-the-p.m.'s story. That's always bound to make someone upset.

But in music, hey, when things don't match up, it doesn't matter. Disorderly conduct is in fact encouraged, usually ending up being something wonderful. You can have 2 against 3, 3 against 4, 4 against 5, 3 against 5, all manner of things. When I'm in the car and my turn signal is clicking metronomically, and the windshield wipers are going at different rhythms with the turn signal, and the car in front of me has his turn signal and windshield wipers on, all at odds with mine, and the stoplight is flashing red in syncopation, and I have the radio on as well, and the rain is beating a steady hiss on the metal of my car... it's all fine. Because it's music. Which is how life should be.