Tag: Playing my Gabbanelli

“Mexicano hasta al tope…” and other not so random thoughts

The part in quotes is a line from Corrido de Juanito, which, as you know, I’ve been learning on the accordion. Because I listen to the song on repeat, I have it permanently stuck in my head and consequently sing it all the time, especially the line above. The funny thing is the line ends up sounding like a commercial when sung on repeat, por ejemplo, “The best part of waking up is being Mexican to the top!” I’m sure you can hear the Folgers song in there, no need to spell it out.

Most of the time, I live in my musical fantasy world, my favorite songs filling my head and keeping me going after my three hours of sleep per night. But then I will have moments when reality wakes me out of my sleep-deprived reverie, and I ask myself who exactly I think I am. I’m certainly not Mexicana hasta al tope. Because of that, some old college friends might call my norteño obsession and accordion playing cultural appropriation. Is it, though? Is it really?

The accordion is German in origin; the name comes from the German akkordeon. Mexicans appropriated the instrument from another culture, in other words — from the German immigrants who settled in Texas and Northern Mexico. This is what happens when cultures rub shoulders. They influence each other. It is unavoidable, or should be. When cultures share music, dancing, and food with each other, they tend to get along a lot better than if they stay suspicious and aloof from each other. There is much cultural snobbery and myopia when people get their hackles up over hoarding aspects of their culture.

I will never forget the article I read years ago, in which a Chinese-American woman claimed the bone-broth fad was appropriation of Chinese culture. It didn’t seem to occur to her that cultures all over the world might have been cooking bone broths for millennia. This doesn’t even fall under the category of sharing; it rather signifies our forebears’ mutual necessity to utilize all parts of the animals they slaughtered. The Chinese were not alone in this.

If I were to only play the music of my culture, I would play the fiddle or one of those tiny accordions popular with hillbillies and the Irish. My family was part of Irish dance culture for years, and I distinctly recall hearing the accordion playing the same jigs and reels fifty times over. I mean, it’s not a matter of recall. All those jigs and reels are indelibly printed on my psyche along with big wigs and bling. But alas, the Irish don’t count Americans of Irish ancestry as being Irish, and there goes my culture. Like so many Americans, I simply have a mezcla of cultural parts and pieces, which includes Mexican pieces because I’ve lived around them my entire life.

Is there such a thing as cultural appropriation in America? I’m going to say yes. I was thinking about this at dawn, having been awake for hours. My body was achy and sore and I thought I might like to do some yoga. I don’t do yoga, though. Oh, sure, I used to. I appreciated its efficiency in strengthening and stretching the body at the same time. I also argued with other Christians who claimed it was wrong to participate in another religion’s worship. They argued against it because yoga, after all, means yoked, as in yoked to spirits and gods Christians don’t worship. I’ve always found it a little bizarre when Christian churches offer yoga hours in their fellowship halls, but doing it as exercise in one’s living room, sans spiritual components, I thought was quite all right.

The way Americans practice yoga is areligious to be sure, but it’s hugely disrespectful of another culture’s religious practice. I’m not sure what hyper conservative Hindus, who still believe in modesty, think of Americans who do Yoga Booty while wearing pants so clingy you can see every bump and jiggle on the legs and backside, wearing the pants to show off the effectiveness of the exercise. The way we practice yoga might very well be what people mean when they cry, Cultural appropriation! It’s rude and offensive. That and maybe chintzy plastic Native American dolls and fake moccasins. Marketing off a culture we very nearly wiped out to extinction no doubt leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the extant native tribes.

Speaking of weird activities Christian churches get up to, along with showing off their jiggly booties…no, I don’t think they make moccasins or plastic dolls or even bone broth. At one time, it was standard charity in England for bones to be used multiple times, once at the wealthy person’s house, who supped on the richest broth, of course, until finally the picked-clean bones were ransferred to the poorest of the poor to make broth with. But church food pantries these days are more inclined to collect canned vegetables and beans than spare animal parts. No, the weird activity I was going to mention is doing counseling sessions using the Enneagram personality typing system. In response, Reformed-style Christians are horrified, despite the dubious occultic roots behind Enneagram.

There are no known accusations of cultural appropriation regarding Enneagram; I just find it amusing that Christians have latched onto it AND that more Reformed types are making a fuss of it. I wouldn’t care one way or the other if Christians didn’t have a peculiar problem with lacking self-awareness. They make lofty claims that we shouldn’t be looking to any other source but the Bible for help, but what they really mean is “I don’t want to know anything about what I’m really like inside.” In other words, they don’t want to be faced with their own egos. Obviously, the ones using the Enneagram are busy identifying with their egos, looking straight into them, but that is not to say that there aren’t many Christians who refuse to look.

I took the Enneagram once, at my husband’s insistence, as he found it gave him an accurate description of his personality. Modern Enneagram type descriptions are incredibly detailed, unlike the truly occultic horoscopes. This might be why some people have an aversion to Enneagram. It’s not always pleasant to read that you fit an archetype that isn’t 100% positive. Was the type I tested as an accurate description of me? Sure, it was…at the time. And I really didn’t like it; hence, it motivated me to not be “my type” as much as possible.

Being self aware is a good starting point for making good choices in this life; I suppose one could be self aware and still make wrong choices. For example, a truly invested thief could be a proud criminal. Or maybe in more ordinary circumstances, a person might learn to identify with their negative traits and never seek growth. Well, I admit I still have personality traits I’m working on. I often shut the world out so I can pursue my personal goals, which my Enneagram description predicts. That pattern of behavior is so ingrained I believe it would be difficult to change. Like my pursuit of the accordion, for example… No, no, I have examined my interior and decided playing norteño on the accordion is a good choice. A wonderfully positive choice. It had better be. That norteño style accordion I bought was really expensive. Plus, I love singing in Spanish. Here it comes again. I. Can’t. Stop. Singing… Mexicano hasta al tope. It’s somehow gratifying to sing a song about someone with an intact culture, even though part of the song’s sadness is the subsequent loss of culture in the US, loss brought on by Juanito’s children no longer speaking Spanish.

Año del Acordeón

Well, it’s certainly not the year of social media. I don’t have time for social media. Or I don’t prioritize it, I should say. What I have left is the blog that I’ve had since 2008 or 2009… don’t remember. Sadly, I meant to return to jilldomschot.com after killing it, but it was purchased by an Asian company and is parked with what appear to be Chinese words on it. So, while I’ve been blogging for over ten years, the blog has had peaks and valleys, and I’ve lost a lot of content. Not that I care really. Most of my posts were throwaway, trying to meet post quotas while following my interests at the time. I have some sadness over losing my 18th century historical content, but it does not go deep.

I’ve determined this to be the year of the accordion because it’s what I value at the moment. I don’t mean that I don’t value God, family, work, etc. Those are on another tier of value. When I was in my late thirties, I used to read a blog written by a British lady who had dedicated her forties to learning to play the accordion and to doing the other things she’d put off as a younger person. It was called Rainbows and… I can’t remember. I believe she also gardened and wrote poetry or did photography. I wish I could find her blog again, but alas, I don’t have a blogspot follow widget any longer. How time marches on. Her blog inspired me to dedicate my forties to several goals. Being that I will turn fifty in 2023, I’d like to assess how far I’ve gotten.

My goals were these: learn the accordion, write and publish a science fiction novel, and finish a mechanical engineering degree. Let’s start with the accordion.

When my husband bought me my Hohner, I had just turned forty, and it was therefore our 20th anniversary. We were a little drunk at the local pub, and he bought it from his phone, just like that. At first, I found it a little difficult to learn. The typical norteño accordion is a diatonic, with different notes played squeezing in vs pulling out. I went through the tutorial books that came with the accordion, one of which taught reading music in a handful of lessons before forcing the student to suddenly read it with no help. I have had little formal musical education. While I know the music system, I never learned to read music well enough to use as a guide for songs. I looked for other ways to learn my instrument but ended up leaving the accordion in Socorro when we moved to Roswell. This was no slight toward the accordion. I moved over here before the rest of the family and brought almost nothing with me, not even my books. At some point, I went back for the accordion and still did not play it for some time because I was busy and overwhelmed. Finally, I decided I would dedicate a half hour a day to really learning the instrument. You know the rest of the story, I think. Just as I was familiar and proficient enough to play my instrument sans craning my neck to look at the buttons while I played scales and songs, it was destroyed in a car accident, and I had to learn the feel of a new, slightly bigger Gabbanelli. I’ve since doubled my practice time. Have I learned to play the accordion in my forties? Yes, but there isn’t a magic line to playing an instrument, is there? In a year’s time, I will play it better than I do now. And a year after that…

Did I publish a science fiction book? Sure, a jokey one called The Minäverse and then one about the Roswell aliens called Order of the PenTriagon. I doubled my goal regarding that, and I somehow managed to do it while working full-time. This is where my forties began to blur into desperate attempts at achieving my goals in whatever manner possible. On my days off or before my shifts, I would take classes at the community college and stop at the local coffee shop to work for a while on my books. I did not, however, achieve the degree. There isn’t a full university here, in any case, but I still tried to scrap it all together. I even considered finishing a math associates degree and taking a welding course. But the welding course was very expensive and seemed an impossibility while working. The last attempt I made at this goal was to sign up for online classes in January 2020, but I had a strange feeling in my gut that it would be a bad idea to use my savings on these classes, and I dropped them at the last minute. When the Covid shutdown hit, I lost my work and didn’t have money coming in for months. I was a contract and freelance laborer by that time, and while I’d heard I could go before a hearing to get the Covid unemployment for this kind of work (I had several friends who successfully achieved this), I chose to wait until people stopped being ridiculously afraid and depressed and send work my way again. I could understand the tutoring and substitute teaching disappearing, as schools were closed and parents were afraid to have people come to their houses. But losing the editing I didn’t really understand. I had a number of books scheduled during this time, but the authors couldn’t concentrate to write, I guess. They were depressed and distracted. I tend to throw myself into work to avoid depression, but not everyone operates that way.

The upshot is, people can make all the plans they want, but life throws you the unexpected. For example, when I turned forty, I didn’t expect to move to Roswell, of all places. And while science fiction predictions have often become real, it’s difficult to ascertain which will and which will not turn into reality. The world wasn’t ready for the absolute ridiculousness of 2020 and beyond. So, that’s where I sit. I don’t know that I’m going to make any life goals or dedicate my fifties to anything. I’m just going to keep going and putting work in, as work is what I do; it’s what I’ve always done. Perhaps I will dedicate the coming decade to trying to hear God’s voice better and living in his will. Meanwhile, I’ve been learning a song on the accordion called Corrido de Juanito. It’s a very sad song by Calibre 50. I might or might not have posted the video before.

New Year’s Resolutions

I don’t make them, though they are, I’m sure, worthwhile if you have the gumption to carry them out. On the other hand, I’ve made all manner of resolutions to keep on moving forward, no matter how tired and listless I feel. There’s no choice but to do that. There’s no point in sitting around waiting to find out if something is meant to happen by design or fate.

Do you remember that old movie Stranger Than Fiction? As a writer of fiction, I enjoyed the concept of that movie quite a bit, in a which an author is writing people into existence. After her hero realizes he’s a book character, an English professor — a professor with an expertise on the phrase Little did he know… — recommends that he sit around and do nothing all day to find out how much free will he has according to the story world. Alas, a wrecking ball destroys his apartment, suggesting his deck is stacked. Rather than allowing this deterministic universe get the better of him, he chooses to live in a way he’d never allowed himself to live before. E.g., he learns to play the guitar and falls in love. Of course, this being an old movie, spoilers don’t matter, right? Ultimately, he chooses to live the purpose he was written for and sacrifice his life to save a little boy.

The author realizes that she’s unwittingly become a monster and decides that it would be wrong to kill off a man who’s willing to sacrifice his life for others. Therefore, she changes the ending of her story, despite that it ruins the great artistic aesthetic of the work. Movies like this are rare, which is why it stuck with me. It’s philosophical, it’s fundamentally pro-life, it’s funny, and it has a happy ending.

But mostly, I don’t want to be the person who waits for fate to bring her a wrecking ball. For that reason, I should make resolutions, but I’m sorry; I’m just too busy. My list is already full. If fate, that is, God, wants me to do more, he’s going to have to make that clear.

On the other hand, it’s the tradition to have a New Year’s song, which is, fatefully, whatever comes on the radio as the clock strikes midnight. Who listens to the radio these days? We used to in the car on the way back from Albuquerque after our New Year’s Eve movie (LOTR and The Hobbit trilogy kept us going for a lot of years.) I do listen to the radio, though. I have a radio app on my phone. To stay awake, we were watching a movie called Alpha (highly recommend). As it approached midnight, I put in my earbuds and tried to find a channel that wasn’t playing ads. My husband had fallen asleep despite the film, and it was obvious I had to find a song on my own.

Finally, just before it was too late, I clicked on a Tejano station, which began to play Un rinconcito en el cielo. I smiled at the accordion intro. You see, when I first explored Norteño by listening to the Mexican stations coming out of Albuquerque, that song had taken my breath away. I fell in love with the accordion, and there was no going back. This song was how it started, and now I can play it on my very own Gabbanelli. I’m happy and grateful my New Year song is this one. It puts a positive spin on my year. This might sound superstitious to some people, but it’s really not. It’s a game, and not so very different from choosing a word to be the theme of the year, except I let the radio choose it for me. Whatever the case, I must find inspiration in it. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to find inspiration in all songs. I cringe when I consider my New Year song could have been from a country station if it hadn’t been playing ads. Maybe if Garth Brooks sang Standing Outside the Fire it might be inspirational. But what are the odds of that? Then again, what are the odds of music existing at all unless there’s a creator? I don’t know. It’s kind of difficult to create a set of odds with an infinite God as the one given.