My first apartment!
It’s tiny—one room—eight blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. My own four walls. Literally. I climb the freshly painted white steps to the door that opens because I have the key. Oh-Oh! There is space enough for my piano, a sofa-bed, a desk, dresser and not much else. But it’s mine. Well for a price. I think the rent was $185 a month which in today’s market wouldn’t get you a floor. Or a roof.
I am SO happy. Now I can play the piano and sing and not have my mother yelling at me because she wants to watch T.V.
Free at last!
Until I meet my downstairs neighbor. Well I hear her first… Pounding a broomstick against her ceiling–my floor–as I play a cheery melody on the piano. The first time this happens it scares the hell out of me. I learn that she is a book editor and values silence–probably more than air.
I try to be respectful and considerate. Well as thoughtful as an emotionally stunted, immature twenty-one year old can be… I don’t play early. Or late. I cover the piano with a heavy blanket and weave strips of felt between the hammers and strings so the keys go thud, thud, thud. I play with the soft pedal. Always. But nothing satisfies her.
I like to sing in the shower too…until she starts banging a skillet against her wall. It is demoralizing. I want to be a professional musician. Well that’s my dream! But in reality I am floundering after graduating from college and take a job in a local emergency room. On the graveyard shift. As the admitting clerk. I don’t have a car so I ride my bicycle to work at 10:30 at night and back home through rush hour traffic in the morning.
I’m lucky to be alive. But that job… That job saves me. If you want to learn something profound about life itself, about…say…keeping things in perspective, then spend some quality time in an emergency room. It takes three years of real-world education to “right myself.” To move to another apartment in Santa Monica, on the ground floor, behind a tortilla factory, to leave my job in the ER and drop out of nursing school to sing in a seedy piano bar near downtown Los Angeles. It’s my first gig. The first of thousands…
I buy a car…
Santa Monica is only six miles from where I live now, but it seems a world away. The memories nibble at the edge of my thoughts as I drive west towards the ocean.
I’m making that sojourn Saturday, April 18th for the first ever Santa Monica Ukulele Festival located on the campus of Santa Monica High School. Just say “Samohi,” like the locals…
My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, perform a set of fun, sing-a-long songs in the outdoor Greek Amphitheater at 1:00 P.M. Later in the afternoon my husband Craig Brandau and I teach a strumming/fingerpicking workshop. Time for a pit stop as food trucks dish their goodies before the evening concert! A galaxy of ukulele performers (Craig and me too) play and share the stage with student musicians from Samohi. This festival is a fund-raiser for their music department. The audience is invited to bring their ukes and play along at the concert.
Please check out the Santa Monica Ukulele Festival Website for details and join us as we bring aloha spirit to Los Angeles.
I suspect my old neighbor—the one with the broomstick and skillet—is long gone. But she taught me something SO important. To hang in there. Even when no one is cheering you on. And because I did, this trip to Santa Monica will be especially sweet.
