I can only do one thing

at a time.
Do you remember that "exercise" where you had to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time? Or wast it vice-versa? Or were you supposed to be able to do it two ways? 
I don't think Sister S.... who taught us all music all those years ago actually gave my brother and sisters that as an exercise. She certainly didn't try with me as I wasn't learning to actually play an instrument.
The Senior Cat tells me he always sits in a certain place in church where he can watch the organist. Her ability fascinates him. "I don't know how she can move both hands and both feet all in different places - the right places."
I don't know either but I don't know it in an entirely different sort of way. It is one of those things I have never experienced.  I am quite able to accept that L...(the organist) can do these things. I have seen other people do it. What is more I am quite ready to accept that she can read a musical score and hear the music - as she interprets it. For some years I caught the same morning train as Middle Cat's music lecturer in teacher training college. He would, more often than not, be reading a score. We once talked about his capacity to hear what was on the page. Unlike him I have to know a piece of music well to be able to read it at all. Unless I know it I have only the vaguest idea of what it might sound like. The Senior Cat admits he has no idea at all. He used to be able to read a simple treble line but he claims to have forgotten altogether. 
Reading and doing  - playing the instrument - is magical. 
I remember learning to read braille as well. It was something I needed to know so I prowled off and was taught by a man who was skilled in the art of writing not just braille but music in braille. 
    "Cat, it isn't enough to learn what  this looks like. You need to know what it feels like." 
Now I learned to read braille in my early teens. braille was written from right to left with a stylus making the little dots in the cardboard and then flipped over and read from left to right. Being a left handed cat I can write right to left just as badly as I can write from left to right. That wasn't too bad but trying to "read" the little dots with my finger tips? That was another story altogether. Trying to read it with two hands the way a good braille reader does was beyond me. I never did master the music side of braille but I did manage to learn enough to help the other teen who needed help...and, if I could remember it, I would probably still read braille back to front with one paw following the dots under the page from right to left. I tell myself that it was a little like reading music and playing the instrument. 
Braille is relatively simple and nobody ever asked me to read it while I was walking. Sign language is something else. I have forgotten almost all I ever knew. I rarely use it these days. Most of my conversations are short, social and simply polite greetings. Signing is a two handed activity and, even standing still, it is something I find incredibly difficult. But I watched a couple in the shopping centre recently. They were walking along signing to each other - a furious argument if I read any of it correctly. What is more they managed to do that and not bump into anyone else - which is more than those sending a text message to someone can do. How do they do it?
If you have never experienced something you need to be able to imagine it at some level to have any concept of it. Someone said to me of something recently, "I'm surprised you know that Cat. You've never been able to do it."  The answer was I think that I had used my "imagination".  It made me wonder what "imagination" really is.
I wonder too whether this isn't part of learning to do things. You need, even if unconsciously, to "imagine" what is going to happen. It isn't just a matter of reacting to what happens but knowing in a certain way what might happen.
I need to think about this because I need to imagine something so I can write about it.