Music Man

The great trumpet valve oil hunt was concluded this week when Lulli and Gumps came back from Bangkok with some. We had found this trumpet for Silas about three weeks ago, when we’d gone to the music store to get my guitar fixed (played it outside; came back inside; tuned it, broke the nut — presumably its glue a victim of the extraordinary climate variance). Anyway, we saw this trumpet and figured, why not? But no valve oil. And so began the great valve oil hunt. There doesn’t appear to be any in the entire city of Saigon. We solicited several recommendations re. substitutes; they all agreed (even the crazy guy from Wilmington, N.C. whom Scott and I met after watching some Fulham match at the Bhudda Bar) that vegetable oil would work so long as we cleaned the entire instrument out with soap and water each week. We seemed poised to try this a few times but never got around to it… Besides, Silas picked up a new musical obsession last week in Cambodia: a two-stringed instrument, a trol, which he bought from a vendor outside Ta Prohm. You play it with a bow (there's a picture of a fellow playing one in the Angkor Wat gallery) and some Chinese dude gave Silas a lesson in the Siem Reap airport while were waiting for our flight out. Cool moment actually. Silas screeching away on the thing with Lulli looking on, offering some advice from the somewhat relevant perspective of the cellist she is, and this old codger comes shuffling over and just stands in front of the boy watching him. Finally Lulli asks him if he knows how to play, and the guy nods and reaches for the trol. He sits down and starts in on it, a bit rustily, but he gets it down quickly and tunes it and shows Silas how to hold the bow. Played Frere Jacques, then reveals he hadn’t played one of these in 60 years! He had a great time. We had to get to our gate but I think he’d have gone for hours… In an case, the trol was broken when we got back to HCMC, coming through the final security check, the smushed victim of two oversized bags belonging to a less-than-attentive, Gucci-bedecked Viet Kieu family. So we’re off the music story again today to get it fixed. Remains to be seen what we’ll come home with.