Falling in Love With a Piano: Everyday Magic, Day 1,044
“You have an inferiority complex as big as a house, you stupid idiot,” he screamed at me. But then he did something surprising: he went out and came back with a grand piano, mainly for me since I had mentioned I wanted to learn to play. He got it for a song from a nightclub going out of business, hired someone to paint it a smooth black, and somehow had hauled into our living room to sit among the plastic-covered couches.
I was 12 or so, and he was my father, a bully but also capable of grand (so to speak) gestures. The deal was that if I practiced, we could keep this massive instrument that took up half the formal living room we barely used. He also made a deal with the families of two girls who lived on our street that they could practice on our piano too.
We all started lessons, but the other girls quickly fell away from piano grace, not really interested in playing. Me, on the other hand? I was all in. I sat on the black bench, my hands on the keys, and dutifully did the scales and short pieces assigned, then I plucked keys to figure out the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” or Lulu’s “To Sir With Love.” Two hours later, I would forced off only because of dinner, another Swanson TV dinner, likely fried chicken although I mostly just ate the mashed potatoes and mysterious and sugary hot apple dessert. Then I was back on the piano.
Because my musical priorities required greater proficiency, I had to work extra hard for my piano teacher so that she would show me better ways to spread my fingers, make key leaps, and use those magical pedals. I also needed to learn to read music, a foreign language made of curves and dots, lines and dashes.
Although I couldn't play what I wanted in its fullness yet, I begged my mom to take me to the music store so I could get some of my own music, which included collections of early 70's pop music. Highly motivated by my new sheet music, as soon as I could, I taught myself “Brian’s Song,” playing it dozens of time a day, often crying along with the notes as I thought of the sad story of the two football players who somehow became besties across racial divides before one of them died.
I had a lot of time because I didn't have friends as a kid (too weird, too much of a smart-ass, too insecure and loud and out of step with others). I also didn't put much time into studying, so aside from washing down the kitchen counter each night, riding my bike around the horseshoe-shaped lane where we lived in the Jersey 'burbs, and waiting for "Love, American Style" to air, I had a lot of time on my hands.
Although I was a C students at school in all things except art, which I loved and excelled at, it was more than a shock to my parents how hard I worked at learning to play the piano.
“She can’t sit still, but you sit her at the piano, and she doesn’t leave for hours,” my mother said.
“It’s the only thing that shuts her up,” my father said.
But I didn’t care what anyone said: The piano was my closest friend, amplifying how I pressed my fingers on the keys, shaping the combo platter of notes, quiet, and timing into something that told me I was never alone and that making things with my hands was the key to finding my place in the world.
I would leave unlimited hours of piano playing behind, but never my love of using my hands to make something vital. I quickly found my way into songwriting, then poetry, which of course took hold in a wildly expansive way, but there's still the piano. Sweetly enough, many of the places I've lived since childhood included a piano on or near the premises. So I continued to play wherever I landed, never achieving musical excellence but surely bringing myself bouts of ecstasy.
With Ken, I inherited a lovely upright piano made right here in Lawrence, which we painted purple because it needed to be painted, and why not a favorite color? Occasionally, I've taken more lessons but often focused in one piece over and over (in the last decade of so: "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" by Edvard Grieg).
My father's harsh words and grand gestures no longer hold sway over me, and I don't need to seal myself up in music or other arts to protect myself or find solace, but I do need to keep making things -- a poem, a song, a drawing of a tree, a quilt, a pot of soup -- because it's my life practice. As a practice, it can lead me into clarity, grace, presence.
Even now, I can land my hands on one of my first great loves, and follow where the music takes me.
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