Playing a Tun

When a drummer gets a new drum, he realizes it is part of the broad instrumental spectrum. When a piano player, like The Great Plotnik, buys four tunes (pronounced toon-es) at the Sunday Market in Chichicastenango, he brings them home and begins to Bonk and Bink and Blonk on them until his wife covers her ears and runs from the room.

Each tun has two notes. You play them with little mallets. If The Great Plotnik places all four together on his lap, and uses two mallets, he can make a Bonk, a Bink, a Blonk, a Blink, a Blap, a Bloop, and another Bonk and Bink (two of the tunes sound pretty much the same).

He thinks he will use at least two of the tunes (perhaps three) to accompany himself as he tells a story about Guatemala, perhaps about climbing to the top of Temple Four in Tikal to watch the Sunrise, or perhaps about hanging out with the Garifuna hip hop Spanish rappers, or perhaps about watching the steamy volcanoes in Antigua or perhaps about the young, grim teenagers in army uniforms with huge automatic rifles guarding every bank and jewelry store in the country, but he will have to write that story first. Then it's time to Bonk, Bink, Blonk, Blink, and perhaps even Blap and Bloop.