June 22.23: Coping, but barely

I was never much of a reader. My misspent youth was at the piano. But sometimes there would be a Nancy Drew book in the summer, and the piano would wonder where I was. I was with Nancy and her chums, of course, in her roadster and wearing a frock!

Then my own chums and I would talk about the books.

That is my impressive background as a book reviewer. But a book review is an opinion, yes? And I do have a vast experience giving my opinions. Opinions, I find, are quite the fashion these days anyway.

I’ve followed Dan Antion’s blog for some time now. When Dan started to talk about the books he was writing, I followed along but didn’t see that they would be anything I’d be interested in. I rarely read fiction, let alone anything that might border on science fiction or fantasy. But the title of the first book was “Knuckleheads,” one of my favorite words. The hook was in.

This is my review of his trilogy: I have not done so much daytime reading since Nancy Drew! I am in a state of disbelief at how I was so unexpectedly, wholemindedly pulled into Dan’s story.

Yesterday I read the last word of the last book, slowly uncoiling from the tension of the final chapters, and then just sat, trying to remember what my daytime routine used to be.

I am sending Dan’s trilogy to my life-long friend Ann, in NY. How appropriate since she shared her Nancy Drew books with me so long ago. She is deep into “Knuckleheads” and her chum there is waiting impatiently for her turn with it.

A bonus: the pages in all three books have wonderful white space.

 

“Knuckleheads”

“The Evil You Choose”

“When Evil Chooses You”

With congratulations to Dan on his gifts as a storyteller!

 

 

July 1.22: Coping, but barely

In crowded company

of musicians through the ages,

I’ve fumbled in attempts

to play while turning pages.

More than once I’ve chased

sonatas to the floor,

twisting off the bench

to nab the fleeing score.

Flagrantly contrary,

it always had the knack

to land so I’d dislodge

my sacroiliac.

To keep the left hand going

and play at obtuse angle

crossed Mozart with aerobics,

performance art fandangle.

Now comes a pageless music,

no flip and fumble here —

what a total wimp-out,

musicianship veneer.

What kind of ease is this?

It seems somehow a cheat

to keep your fingers focused,

turning pages with your feet.

 

 

More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.

 

March 29.22: Coping, but barely

\The 88th day

of a calendar year

is a hooray for the piano,

proud modern clavier.

Eighty-eight keys

to knot up our fingers,

uncountable hours

that put us through wringers.

Lessons and practice

dulling many a day,

but what a delight

to just sit down and play.

From Czerny to Joplin

is an arduous travel

and can make your resolve

and your neurons unravel,

but the family and friends

who won’t whimper or squawk

will help you endure —

they’ll have your Bach!

The time that it takes

to learn the technique

makes thousands of hours

dismal and bleak,

but just when you think

it’s too much to withstand

the mystery of music

flows out of your hand.

Eventually it comes,

a soul satisfaction,

after dragging delay of

gratification.

So whether some Gershwin

or Schubertian lieder,

may a piano today

accompany you, dear reader!

 

 

As some of you know from my blog, I lived through many, many years of piano lessons. I hated my lessons and I hated practicing, but, boy, did I love to play. My piano was my upper and my downer and my go-to for the stress du jour.

As I understood it, my piano teacher was, pedagogically speaking, a descendant of Liszt. This did not work well for me because, as everyone knows, Liszt had three hands. The expectations were hardly realistic for those of us with a mere two.

Nonetheless, like others, I persisted. Persistence and piano go together. Today I salute the teachers of both. Happy Piano Day, dear reader! And thanks to my friends Donna and Bill who tuned me into it!

 

 

December 1.20: Coping

Zinnia: thoughts of absent friends

 

Once upon a long-ago 1968, two life paths — mine and Libby’s — crossed in the highly combustible, hilarious, hormone-laden world of a junior/senior high school. She taught music and I was the new English teacher.

We met in the teachers’ workroom in a haze of mimeograph fumes, and quickly established our mutual love of music.  I was enlisted on the spot as official accompanist for her junior-high musical extravaganzas. I do not forget the moment the curtain went up for the ballroom scene in “Die Fledermaus,” with its aluminum foil chandeliers, and the audience exploded into spontaneous applause.

Or when the 8th-grade Josephine ad libbed her lines to the 7th-grade Ralph Rackstraw in “Pinafore” rehearsal.

Or the shivering hours in Libby’s basement as she sewed the angel costumes for “Hansel und Gretel.” Her childhood on a North Dakota farm made her impervious to cold and eventually she kept a blanket just for me because she grew tired of hearing my teeth chatter.

Libby and I had the best time in those bachelor days even though she could never convert me to gin or cats. I held to a firm belief in scotch and catlessness.  But, beyond bachelorhood, many were the years of friendship, many the pastries, many the morning coffees, many the long talks.

I would say now that I am dead to Libby but the fact is that for her today I never lived. She is far into dementia. She was lovely, a world traveler, opera buff, master gardener, idealist, a tolerant, inquisitive, lifelong learner, protective of all life. Cat addict.

She still is all those things; she just doesn’t know it.

I salute her today, her 93rd birthday. I will know for both of us.

 

January 17.20

You are right, dear reader: you have seen this little sighing bird before. In my last post.

He has been with me in a singular way. Allow me to take you back to the late 1940s, when I was in kindergarten and my mother was lobbying the highly-respected (read: tyrannical) piano teacher in our area, who didn’t take students before they could read. I was not consulted.

Mom won. I couldn’t read but I started lessons, and I spent the next several years in tearful plea to be allowed to quit. I hated my lessons and I hated practicing. Mom said I could quit after ten years. I remember the moment because one remembers when one’s blood runs cold.

At that ten-year mark everything changed because I had my first Liszt étude: Gnomenreigen. It was the beginning of my suspicion that Liszt had fifteen fingers. Two years later, my next Liszt étude: Un Sospiro, The Sigh. I played it well. Not brilliantly, but well.

I had two dreams as a pianist: to play the original Rhapsody in Blue and to play La Campanella, The Bells, another Liszt étude. I never accomplished the first. I could only approximate the second. Alas.

But I think about the eloquence of those études. A sigh. The bells. They are there in those magical acrobatics. And I marvel at the transcendent power of a grey image, a D flat, and, yes, a tyrannical piano teacher.

Connections: May 8.18

I don’t know how to play it

wouldn’t know where to begin

and yet it beams out a gravity

much like a rolling pin

or terracotta flowerpot

pruners, or a hoe

piano or organ keyboard,

a scraper for bread dough,

a pad of lined blank paper

a pen, an artist brush

they make my fingers eager

they give me a head rush

with primal primitive instinct

my fingers stretch, reach out

but it’s really my very self

the pull is all about.

Certain things there are

that, silent, speak to me

make my fingers restless

to do, to make, to be.

 

More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.

Connections

 

 

Connections: March 25.18

Face to the wind

I look ahead

goodbye to the old

now the new instead.

It’s a digital thing

unlike my old grand

a sign of the time

like the gnarl of my hand.

But I admit I’m befuddled

in this alien realm:

am I at a piano

or the Enterprise helm?

 

 

Connections

Connections: March 19.18

MY (VERY) TRIED AND TRUE FRIEND KIMBALL

Yesterday I said goodbye

in private chilly wake

empty chairs attending

my lonely little ache.

For over fifty years

in rages and in joys

my ten, its eighty-eight

conspired to make noise.

Responsive, empathetic

not like other things

it lifted up my spirit

and gave my fingers wings.

You cannot understand

unless you’ve parted too

with a beautiful piano

that grew old along with you.

 

Connections

Vagaries: October 11.16

Bête noire

best friend

therapist

curse and godsend.

 This clumsy chunk of wood and wire

monument to stubbornness

taught me to be

Queen of Stubborn

immovably

patient and impatient.

I had an itch

way deep

that made me touch the keys.

I had to play.

I cannot remember life without a piano

this love-hate relationship that coddled my inwardness

yet insisted the music go outward

so how can I think of life without it ?

No inanimate object, this,

but a being with breath

spirit

a forgiving affection for me.

Is it disappointed?

I was never great

but I was good.

More, I entered in to a human thing

the thing with music

where

maybe

we all itch.

Is it

finally

gone?

Is it time to send this

wooden person

to the heap of my past

with dolls

and love letters?

Vagaries

Connections: March 19

Middle C

used to be

the first

forever imbedded

eared, eyed, and headed

for better or for worst.

The alpha note

small-finger-smote

awaking addiction

family friction

in eventual Czernian bloat.

Oh, the hours misspent

a perpetual Lent

da capo ad nauseam

no break or pauseam

my youth distorted and bent.

Why wasn’t I Rubenstein?

Why only me?

What sadistic muse

designed this ruse

this siren-song’d middle C?

Connections