The neighbor in Sunnyvale who asked me to summarize Diana’s character in the fewest words possible with the fewest syllables also asked, “What about Diana first attracted you to her?”
Odd as this might seem, my attention was riveted by her amazing musicianship, a few weeks before she and i first met, when i stumbled upon the 1969 Vox LP of Once: In Memoriam Martin Luther King, Jr.
As page 19 of Diana’s letter to Hob explained, we met when Tom Beveridge sought my help in learning how to write for harp.
Diana wrote of my answering the door of my Arlington apartment after inviting her and Tom to hear the Eight Preludes he had written.
What she didn’t mention that remains vividly etched in memory to this day was that, as i extended my hand to shake hers, she drew it to her lips, kissed it and exclaimed, with typical Diana-like flamboyance, “There! Don’t wash that for three weeks.” Recently while looking for some score, Tom’s original pencil manuscript Tom resurfaced where Diana autographed the rear cover that afternoon.
Over the decades, when we’d hear of a new composition Tom had written or that had been recorded, we’d order a copy on amazon. At one point she even joked that i seemed to enjoy his writing more than she did … probably because of my “fondness for resolution of dissonance.”
May 2018