Tweak: “What are you playing? Some kind of funeral dirge?”

Tweak leaps up next to me on the piano bench.

Me: “Well, yes, actually.”

Tweak: “I don’t even know what a ‘funeral dirge’ is. I read it on the internet.”

[I switch to the “Addams Family” theme song.]

Me: “A ‘dirge’ is a sad song they play at funerals.”

Tweak: “What’s a ‘funeral’?”

Me: “Hmmm… A funeral is when people get together to celebrate, I mean, remember… It means somebody died.”

[I arpeggiate a D-minor chord.]

Tweak: “What happens when people die?”

Me: “They don’t talk as much.”

Tweak: “Then they get flushed down the toilet?”

Me: “That’s mostly for fish. And some Italians.”

[Left hand, octave E-flats, two eighth notes.]

Tweak: “So what happens after people die?”

Me: “That sure is an easy question! You know what ‘sarcasm’ is, Tweak?”

Tweak: “Whenever your lips move?”

Me: “Good. Let’s proceed. What a person believes about dying seems to depend mostly on the holy accident of where they were born. Some people believe in eternal paradise, some people believe in rebirth and trying to ‘get it right’ in the next life, and some people believe that in death we are nothing more than a maggot’s wet dream. An opportunity to feed insects and Darwin.”

Tweak: “Death sounds like a game show.”

Me: “Give us time. It will be.”

[Ragtime intro to Joplin’s “Entertainer.”]

Me: “Some people believe that a person does not die until the last story told is told about them.”

Tweak: “Then I’m going to live forever.”

Me: “Nine times forever.”

Tweak: “That ought to feed the panda.”

[“Come and listen to a story about a man named ‘Jed’…”]

Me: “The circle of life is a milk ring.”

Tweak: “Play it again, ma’am.”

[Circus music.]

 

8 August 2014, “Tolerating Tweak”