ONE MAN'S TRASH......

As far as musical instruments go, the piano will always be my first love....Probably because I took it for about 8 years as a kid....I love the glassy quality of it....I actually have my own baby grand sittin' at my parents house in Olympia, Washington.....(the gift of my godmother, the gal my mother took piano from in Long Beach, CA., when she moved here from Germany after she got married to my dad...Irene Trepanier was her teacher, and therefore I inherited the piano when she died....ironically, I was the only one who kept up with the thing...).








The other day I was running late for work, and happened to glance off the 1 train where it comes up for air at 125th, and saw what looked to be some cool wooden structures lying on a trash heap, waiting for the pick-up next morning....I had no time to get off and investigate, but I wrote a reminder to myself so I'd come by after work later that night....
Of course they weren't anywhere to be seen when I made my pass after midnight, nothing ever is. RULE # ONE, when "dumpster diving in NYC: there are over a million people here, if you see something cool, grab it or hide it, or lug it home somehow, 'cause it WILL NOT BE THERE when you come back later"....BUT,I did find this whole trashcan full of piano keys....and started drooling. Something for a future sculpture or two...Anyone who know me, can understand what a find this is for me.
It was like finding a human leg bone or something..., because I know pianos fairly intimately, having been around them so much, but never had I seen one disassembled, into it's separate parts and lying at my feet...








SCORE!!!

There has been a tradition of "trash diving" in my family for generations...My grandmother on my dad's side: Valerie Shlichta, when my dad was growing up right here in New York, in Brooklyn, his mother found an old chair someone was throwing out. This amazing carved wood throne with lions a foot high on either side of you as you sit, carved out of some hardwood....She cleaned the big ol' thing up and had it reappolstered, we just called it "the lion chair". (My parents bug me these days with the morbid task of deciding if there is anything I'd like to have when they die...The 2 things I can think of are 1. The piano- that's already mine, and 2. The lion chair....

{PHOTO COMING SOON........}


Then there is this thang:




(Sorry for the bad photo..)


This thing is about 4' x 4'. And I found it one drunken night after carousing with a bunch of co-workers at a nearby bar after work....I can barely remember picking it up, but there it was staring at me from across the room the next morning (kinda like some guys I know)....I couldn't believe it! This is so me. I do not know what it will become, but it will be amazing...I just know it...If anyone knows what it is...tell me.



My sister Ginnie finds the most amazing shit too. There is always stuff being thrown out at her school....Like these cool old science models.....

{PHOTO COMING SOON}

....or this cool lab glass.....










So you can see how this runs in the family....







A few mornings later, Saturday...I am laying in bed, just letting the week wash over me, thinking...And I hear from somewhere up above the distant sound of a piano...a beautiful sound to me, always freezes me i my tracks...PIANO HEARD FROM A DISTANCE...Later it occured to me that I may have been hearing the last bit of residue, the soul of the piano laying discombobulated on my bedroom floor, as it floated off into oblivion...Who can say?


Stay tuned and see how these thangs are put to use....