The ad reads as follows:

So my sister gave me this cello a couple years ago. It’s a nice cello. Actually, it’s a great cello. It’s probably the best cello, but I don’t really know much about cellos. Also the neck snapped off. Of the cello. So it’s really more like 3/4’s of a cello, but the other 1/4’s still there, it’s just not attached. It’s kind of like you’re getting two cellos, only one of them doesn’t have a body and the other doesn’t have a neck. But if you stand them up next to each other it’s like old times. You could probably fix it with like some music glue or something like that.

She also gave me a cello bag that I can give to you too, now that I won’t have a cello. It’s a really nice cello bag. You can fit everything in it. Actually, there might even be a bow in the bag, I’m not sure. I don’t want you to think that there’s 100% a bow in the bag. It’s way over there, I can’t check right now. But if it’s in there it’s yours.

If you’re like me and you don’t know how to play the cello then you could use it as a coin bank. It’s hollow and there are two S’s on the front that you could drop the coins through. Then when it’s filled up you could drop it off of your roof or carry it around like a change purse. Ooh, in the cello bag. It’d be like a cello purse. I’d do it but I’m moving across the country and it won’t fit in my car. What else could you do with it. You could saw the front off and use it as a sled. Or give the neck to a baby as like a wizard stick for Christmas. Totally give this cello to someone for Christmas. Or Hanukkah.

Please come get it. I’m in Echo Park. I’d actually go somewhere to meet you if wherever we’re going is a cool place. Like the desert or something.

I’m 90% certain the bow’s in there.

I wonder whatever happened to it.

My son’s violin came to us as a remnant from an art show where my friend Johns rigged up saplings with motion sensors and mechanics so that when people walked in the room, the trees played for you. It’s a pretty pedestrian violin, but for the $40 I traded Johns for it, it sure beat the rental fees over the course of five years.

Will and I once had a cello that we rented. I think we had it about six months or so, in the living room. Once in a while one of us would be brave enough to endeavour tuning the thing and saw at it for a while. I brought it back after it had accumulated some dust. I just felt terrible looking at it all the time.

I do have a bow, tho’. A few years ago I was part of a poetry project for a friend Eric, who was making a cd. His band was myself, our friend Astrid on cello (that girl can really play – like whoa, can she play), and the former drummer from a well-respected Boston band.* Noises were called for on one of the tracks, so Eric decided that I needed to play my guitar with a bow. He picked up a kids’ size bow and some rosin, and I set to work making squeaky noises. And then I wrote three songs** wherein I played the guitar with the bow. I still have the bow. You can’t make me get rid of it.

***

*That is a story all to itself. At some point I may tell it.
**Three rather pretty songs, if I do say so myself.