Repairing My Organ

Not that long ago my station in life morphed from musician to technician.  I have been fortunate enough to be able to be involved in music all of my life both as a composer and performer.  There was only one scant incident when my music inclinations were questioned.  This controversy necessitated a change in my life station as well.  It meant that previous romance or inclination for marriage change.  It turns out somehow my being musical branded me as a failure.  Never have I heard such a thing.  If I think back a long way, there were jokes in existence about making a living in music.  Wannabe comes to mind again.  Where are those Spice Girls?  If I were remiss in my remembrance of my own musical life, perhaps I have been a failure, a loser with a large capital "L."  The things once I desired when pursuing a music career, a university level teaching position or something else where your intellect and creativity were valued and used, have not transpired.  (at least professionally)  Let me rephrase.  I did get to teach twice as a Graduated Teaching Associate.  When John Emche died of a brain tumor, I was asked to fill in for him until they could do a national search.  This was a great opportunity for me, and I took it.  The problem was is that I got the idea in my head that I might be in contention for the full time teaching position.  They told me I had made it into the top five, and that was encouraging.  I witnessed only one live interview with a candidate.  One.  Perhaps there were more.  Needless to say I didn't get the job, and he did.  It was a simple choice for them.  Credentials, clout, and contacts.  The three "C's."  (and I just made that up)  It is true, about college hiring that is.  Credentials, clout, and contacts.  Credentials get you respect, so every academic is focused on acquiring them.  There is a tangible and easily recognizable path to these credentials.  Read any job description or VITA file of an academic, and it is extremely clear.  I won't go into it, but you'll get the drift.  Performances with major orchestras globally.  Prizes.  Scholarships.  Publications.  Clout.  Then there is the other important factor.  Contacts.  If you have received any of these accolades, then you have been in the circles which dole them out.  You have become part of the "In Crowd," as Ramsey Lewis would say.  They believe your contacts will connect with your new position bringing notoriety to them.  It makes sense.  Academia is a word of mouth entity.  It is one guy saying something about the other guy.  There is no cold long shot.  Universities cannot risk hiring a dog.  One of your guys saying another guy is okay is how it works.  Oh, I'm in the "Good Old Boy" network.  Trust.  Screw impartiality, fairness, or diversity.  Why spend your valuable time considering a stranger?  This is the way it works.  Rest assured any position you see advertised in most cases all ready is filled.  They do the job search because they are required.  I would surmise they have a replacement in mind a few years in advance.  Can't have change.  It is is working don't fix it.  Upon reflection this seems like a very bad idea.  Conservation.  The American South is conservative.  They like to keep things the way they have been, and that means those who have the money keep it.  It also eliminates mobility, opportunity, and advancement.  It is almost autocratic.  You better had fit into the group, or out you go.  Enough of this boring rhetoric on staid anachronistic politics.  That is all we have seen for four years, and my soul is almost dead.  Beating a dead horse over money, power, and control.  It used to be artistry, professionalism, money, power, and celebrity.  Consequently we have no celebrities anymore.  How are they produced?  What is the protocol?  With Donald Trump as a model, you buy your way into it.  You buy your popularity.  Who cares if you are popular?  If what you worry about is people liking you, then you are off course.  It is about the art.  You have to do something other than make money.  Usually it involves talent.  Reality TV destroyed this sequence of events.  Completely it annihilated the hierarchy of American pop culture.  Greatly also it obscured the process of success in academia.  Now that we understand American academia is not a pinnacle of values, I will move on.  It took me a while to recover from this loss.  Dramatically it was laden with tumult.  I fell from grace in a major way, and it was hard.  Four years of clinical depression ensued.  I am talking about inexplicable, tormenting, physical and mental anguish.  Depression is a serious disease, and no one should be one bit of remorse about having it.  It is not your fault.  It is a physical disease, and your environment has much to do with it.  I would go as far as to say your environment is the major part of it.  To find relief from this illness, often you must move.  I stumbled upon the live stream of the OSU Jazz Lab Band on Youtube this evening.  OSU is where I worked on my doctorate in composition.  I spent almost ten years in Columbus, Ohio working on music.  When I saw the feed, it was Hughes Hall auditorium where I recorded many concerts via the audio recording position.  I developed a fundamental love and understanding of vocal art music from recording these concerts.  A college aged woman who could sing in Italian, French, and German?  Holy shite, Batman!  What a turn on.  A powerful, talented, intelligent woman.  Not a bimbo.  I teared up for a few seconds, when I remembered giving my own language proficiency recital in this auditorium.  What the hell is that?  Oh well.  It was an excuse to give a recital on your major instrument.  I chose a jazz trio, and I played acoustic piano.  We played mostly my compositions with a few jazz standards thrown in.  In the midst of the Covid 19 lockdown, I am beginning to miss my old musical life.  There is more to teaching that lecturing about information.  There is a cultural element to teaching, and you have to want to do it because you like relating to young people.  This particular attribute has worked well for Holden Thorp.  He is an earthy academic, and is not a mystery whence it came.  It is that part of the profession I am beginning to miss.  It was a long time ago for me teaching.  I do not think it could be said I was a failure or a loser.  If that criteria was monetary success or money, I may not qualify.  It never stopped me from pursuing music.  A majority of the time I never really thought about money.  It was ingrained in me to create the best music possible either with a pencil or with a performance recorded or live.  I found an appropriate outlet for my aesthetic working in the cruise industry.  Unlike America they offered music jobs which used my skills.  It is common knowledge that the cruise industry has been stymied by the pandemic.  All of those well paying music jobs are on hold.  I can't imagine what all of those performers are doing.  My original thought was I went from musician to technician, and partly that is true.  I have had success restoring Rhodes and Fender/Rhodes electric pianos.  I have been able to maintain most of my music studio including vintage synthesizers.  Everything I own works, except a few vintage things I acquired at the death of a friend.  What has been a real challenge is my Hammond A-100 console organ went on the fritz.  After I had it dialed in and sounding exemplary, suddenly there was distortion, inexplicable distortion.  Our local Hammond technician is ill.  There was a capable buy in Raleigh, NC, but although he posted authoritative repair videos on Youtube, he would admonish you for asking if he did commercial repairs.  He was a bit of an asshole.  Your resources are slim when it comes to Hammond repairmen.  I figured out from scratch the Leslie interface for my A-100, and it was complicated.  It meant I had to understand how it worked.  I installed it, and always it has played flawlessly until now.  When you do take the time to read up on the Hammond organ by its bevy of purveyors, they all say one thing.  "Oil!"  This must be interpreted with chaste.  Hammond organs often sit neglected for long periods of time in garages, in storage, or in barns.  When they sit like this, the metal parts will seize from oxidation.  Rust.  You must oil these particular instruments and wait for the penetrating oil to do its job.  For the rest of us, the rule is very different.  Once a year.  Fill the oil cup twice, and that is it.  No more.  If you do put more oil in what can happen is what happened to me.  It will leak out of the oil trough, to the bottom of the tone generator, through the wooden shelf and in my case into the 428 kit box.  This small metal box houses a transformer, a capacitor, and three resistors.  Oil found its way onto the electronic components, and the transformer began to fail producing intermittent and demonic sounding distortion.  Before I really isolated the problem to this interface for the Leslie speaker, I troubleshot the Leslie amp and had it rebuilt.  It would seem more than one issue occurred at the same time as does in life.  The same also is occurring now with Covid 19.  This often fatal virus is much more dangerous than most Americans know.  It causes a myriad of physiological failures of the human system.  In short Covid 19 causes "leaky vessels."  Gel builds up in your lungs, so a respirator isn't always the best idea.  Kidney failure among other things has been found widespread in Covid fatalities.  It makes your vessels leak, and they can leak in your brain, in your abdomen, or in your heart.  Shazam.  That is a nasty disease.  It targets those with other illnesses and exacerbates their consequences.  This is a man made disease, and to this second we do not know who manufactured it.  Trump's "Red Wave" is raging, and yet they don't seem to understand some unknown enemy of the people unleashed this disease on the entire world.  I am beginning to believe in addition to targeted attacks, the meandering nature of the pathogen is proliferating unabashedly.  It is an attack on the people!  We must go own.  My Hammond gets sick and fails to be my catharsis.  Instead I have spent months trying to diagnose its illness.  It stands to reason a musical instrument as old as me and our house would need some attention at the ripe old age of fifty-eight.  As the Leslie 142 sits rebuilt and worthy, it awaits the resurrection of the AO-28 preamp.  I believe its ailment was instigated by the failure of the 428 kit allowing voltages to go where no man has gone before.  You can't let your AC leak into your DC, that is the common rule of tube amplification.  I am having a bona fide professional address my problem, and with Covid 19 it has been difficult.  Like an illicit drug deal I have to take the goods to the "meet" and wait for the results.  I will be glad when it has been resolved, because every man knows it is not a good day when his organ doesn't work.