Evil Kramer's Theory Corner

It has recently come to my attention that some of you out there are confused of my credentials. Why is Evil Kramer even writing for such a magazine as this? Here is the shortened version of the story. It includes unseen passions, hidden talents, and a horse named Wild Charles. However, since space is limited, I have excluded the part involving the horse. Enjoy.

I was the unaged pallor of merlot when my brother, Ferdinand, was born. A mere six was I when out he came, kicking and screaming: rythymless, pitch unrepentant. I believe I swooned, although my papa insists that we Kramers never would. Hoping he be blessed with the gifts that were bestowed upon myself, my parents tried all things possible to interest him in the finer arts of music and cuisine. At five I had studied and mastered Rimsky-Korsakov and Bach. I had sampled duck l'orange and pate grois. Ferdinand, on the other hand, preferred the salted crust of the hardened mucous that resided inside his nose and danced furiously to the head pounding beat of ABBA and The Bee Gees. So distraught were my parents that I believe they actually considered the suggestion I had devised of leaving him on the doorstep of Auntie Gert's good-natured, but culturally malnourished neighbors, the Mortons.

Where my passions lay in Italian operas and the cuisine of the French, his passions lay inside soap operas and the fries of the French. Don't get me wrong, he is a well-made hamburger: juicy, lettuce, tomato, Worcestershire sauce and Swiss cheese, grilled onions, and a slightly braised bun. Dress it up any way you wish, however, a hamburger is still just a hamburger.

One day, after mistakenly accusing my younger brother of absconding with my 1st edition copy of War and Peace (I found out later that father had taken it from my shelf, sans permission), I found myself rifling through little Ferdi's bookshelf and bureau drawers. Imagine my surprise when I happened upon sheet after sheet of music composition, written in my brother's hand, tucked away beneath his collection of popular rock and roll concert T-shirts and pages torn from department store lingerie catalogs. Music that was so beautiful and pure that I could only assume that he had been copying directly from Gorecki scores. Approaching him on the subject, he plead his case of original work. I asked him to play me a few measures and he tried, oh, did he try, but his musicianship was more in the style of an aging drunken panda. I demanded that he write me a piece right there, on the spot, as they say, which he did in less than ten minutes.

I retreated to the conservatory, sat at the baby grand, and played the most mellifluous music I ever had the pleasure of giving a maiden voyage to. The notes poured out of me like late summer rain as the beauty of his composition sank deeper and deeper into my emotional being. Could this delicious music of the gods be coming from what I thought was a soulless chunk of flesh that made up my little brother? I marched immediately into the kitchen where my mother was instructing the cooks on the proper preparation of the evening meal: Torafugu sushi served with warmed sake, homemade from my mother's hand. "Oh, dear," she gasped as the gravity of the situation took her breath. My brother, inept at creating a decent sound on any instrument, had spent the last five years writing beautiful music, seemingly out of the talent phlogiston that was burned off from the Kramer household.

Word spread quickly and poor fifteen-year-old Ferdi was paraded around on many of those mid afternoon television shows that they often market to housewives as well as late night shows designed for insomniacs and methamphetamine addicts. Ferdi: who up until this point had only one friend, and none of us actually believed he was flesh and/or bone. Ferdi: who wanted only to be alone and assemble model aeroplanes and automobiles. Unable to understand why he couldn't play but could write such wonderful music, he had what amounted to a nervous breakdown. After a month spent in the hospital under a veritable coma, he regained his strength and came back home. Mother and Father and I deflected all calls for Ferdi regarding his gift, per his request, and eventually the carnival carnivores went away.

Ferdinand's talents and passions, as it turns out, are mechanical in nature. We would always find him tinkering in the garage improving the gas mileage on one of Fathers motorcycles or turning the food processor into a working remote control aeroplane. He moved out to Portland and became a successful automobile and aircraft repairman as well as an inventor of clever gadgetry.

Music Liberation Project, the fine publication that you hold in your hand right this very moment, and it's impeccable research staff discovered Ferdi's little secret and attempted to get a hold of him for an interview. Cordial as he always is, he discussed his past but told them if they wanted to talk to a real musician they should talk to his big brother, which, of course, is me. So, here we are now, you and I. Ferdinand is comfortably tucked away in his blanket of anonymity, I get the task of instructing the Portland folk on the finer points of music, and you get the pleasure of reading my prose every month. Now go away.

-EK