Gah!

Kevin O hasn’t been looking so hot lately. He’s had one mishap after another. It all basically started over a year ago when he fell off his drum stool during the dress rehearsal for the blues concert and broke a rib. Then, when he was barely healed from that, he got hit by a car while riding his bike. He recovered from that, only to have his achilles tendon detach itself from his heel when he was shoveling snow during that huge dumping of white shit we got last February. That has left him lame, even after surgery and physio. He can’t support his entire weight on that foot, and the doctors have declared him unable to continue the type of work he was doing, which included climbing up and down ladders as the light and sound guy at a local theatre/club. So he has been having money woes as well. On top of that, his girlfriend has been away and he has been depressed. Happily she returns for good in mid-December, but that doesn’t help him right now.

Tonight, during the second piece (Night in Tunisia) of the jazz ensemble concert, he got up from the drums and got the band playing without him, and then left the stage. He returned for the last piece before intermission, and then Hubby and I drove him home. He refused to go to the hospital, but promised that if things got worse, he would call an ambulance.

I am seriously worried about him. He could be having a stroke, or worse. He’s overweight, is on high blood pressure medication (which he had forgotten to take the past few days), doesn’t eat regularly, and has erratic hours. It seems ludicrous that someone of his education and talent should be in such dire straits.

What was also sad is that the students work very hard to prepare for these ensemble concerts. There were eight people in the audience. Eight. Three of them were the family of the baritone sax player. Another three were friends of the singer in the first half. Then there were Hubby and myself. Oh, wait, there was one other prof there, the drama prof who came especially to hear the singer in the second half. Pretty sad. Hubby said it was like that for the chamber ensemble concert last night. Just a handful of people showed up, and the students had worked very hard to put their programme together.

It’s kind of depressing and unfair that the choir puts so much effort into publicizing its concerts (for which admission is charged, as opposed to the others which are free) and ends up getting packed houses when it is just as mediocre an ensemble as the others. Hubby was upset that there weren’t more people at his recital on Friday last. He’s upset with the Duke, who runs the concert series presently, for not advertising sooner and more widely. His policy is not to advertise one concert before another is finished, except that the poster for the choir concert was up a couple of weeks ago. There is no logic to this.

Okay, enough already. Sorry for whinging. I’m worried about Kevin.

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