Instruments

For next Tuesday's start, I have two harmonicas, three tin whistles, a wooden flute, two glockenspeils (of sorts), a drum, a broken lute, a mandolin that you can strum but not fret, a flute, a clarinet, my banjola, my banjo, (the glockenspeils are mine too), um, a recorder, a very crude fretless banjo made from a gas can (my personal favourite of the borroweds), a child's violin (my personal second-favourite of the borroweds), um, a small set of pan pipes. Several poetry books including the Oxford Book of Ballads and the collected works of E.E. Cummings, sorry, e.e. cummings, and a small selection of small poems from Arab Andalusia. As well as two or three books of poems by Jan Zwicky, Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, and some others. Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Louis Riel, D'Arcy McGee, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva. Poem-books are musical instruments too. You know.
Still looking for an electric megaphone. Apparently there are ukuleles and a piano and some keyboards at the school.
So maybe it's going to be okay. Pretty funny though that that manolin is in such bad shape. When I first strung it you could play it below the fifth fret. Now you can't play it at all. Ah well. I'm going to have a mighty orchestra. And a childn't (what happened there? childn't?) child's violin is far less intimidating than an adult violin. Esp since the bow is broke, so I've just got the instrument itself. "Teaching is just improvising on the theme of truth." I wonder if that's still true with a broken mandolin.