Replies

Friends, glad you’re enjoying the piece. (More of my work is linked in the tagline.) I hope you’ll ping some of your friends to the thread who are music lovers, film lovers, NYC lovers… They will thank you, as will I. And yes, your thoughtful comments at the NYT page, all other feelings aside, would be cherished by me, as they will be saved forever in their digital archives. Kindly consider posting one.

1. elcid1970: Not sure what scene/movie you speak of, but actually, it is a trumpet in the opening of Godfather Part I. It was fun writing the paragraph that opens, “The screen is pitch black…” I took the time to start the film on my Amazon digital collection this May and carefully note the sequence of film content in the final draft, frame by frame. Black screen, trumpet melody, repeat melody, titles, etc. This was certainly the most satisfying paragraph in the piece to write, and the most powerful. It was in writing that paragraph that the piece became a piece of art. It really did take me six years to figure out how to note the melody. I even took my hand at creating an illustration in June 2012 to submit with the piece (which is how I dated the incident; it is saved in Gmail) but that just wasn’t going to work. I had to denote the melody — everything, actually — with text only. My coup was the use the the vertical pipe symbol — | — as bar lines for my melody. It is very, very tricky to throw in an odd typographical character that is integral to text, but which is rarely used by editors and could put off an editor and kill a piece. Oh, when it came together, what a thrill! So proud of that. Anyway, It really is a trumpet.

2. P8riot: See #1 above. Start the film if you have it in your collection. Perhaps you’re listening to a different performance on YouTube…? Funny how so many commenters around the Web made a point to say they stopped to listen to this beloved melody again!

3. blu: Your comment, “it doesn’t seem like it’s all there” is intriguing in itself. In case you’re referring to the piece not all being there, if you go to the link, please note there is an ad interrupting the piece, then scroll down, and you continue to the last two paragraphs. (Just in case that’s what you meant.)

4. ProtectOurFreedom: Many thanks for the sincere compliment. I think in many respects this will be my favorite Diary piece for years of my 12 so far. I learned so much as a writer taking this one up a notch. The incident and story was so precious to me, that I held it and worked on it off and on for six years until not only was I 100% satisfied with it, but I was convinced the editors simply could not pass it up. Then I hit the send button and prayed. I can deal with rejection, but this one was too breathtaking to take a chance at a clumsy final draft. I heard back exactly two Saturdays after sending it (May 19 to June 2), then it hit the Web exactly 30 days later. This Monday you can be sure I’ll buy a stack of the NYT print edition to have keepsakes for myself and family when it hits the stands. Two days!

All, thanks for indulging me as I memorialize a composition with writer notes, as I have here. This has been a truly thrilling week for me, and I thank God with tears of joy that this one got published. For many reasons.

Still being,