The Piano Lesson
During the pandemic, I bought a piano. And why not? The world was closed and I had thousands of dollars in poker money sitting upstairs in my sock drawer. Maybe if I devoted that cash to the acquisition of a musical skill, I could make the piano pay for itself when I (eventually, inevitably) performed by repertoire at the great concert halls of Europe.
If you don’t think you can purchase a piano on-line, think again. I found a guy in Brooklyn who refurbishes used pianos, posts them to his site, and will deliver right to your door. After speaking with him on the phone a few times, I picked myself out a 2000 Yamaha five-foot baby grand stained in a gorgeous mahogany. The color was Martha’s choice; I was content to go with flat piano black but Martha insisted the brown color was prettier and damn it if she wasn’t right.
Obviously, you are wondering if I am a capable pianist. The answer: no. No, I am neither capable nor competent. I have almost no aptitude for the instrument. My technique is abysmal, my sight-reading mediocre at best, my musicality of the “tin ear” variety. Whatever meager talents I possess do not extend into the world of music. And yet I play every single day I am able.
The piano is a puzzle. If one thinks too long about how one is performing two independent motions with two independent hands, one’s brain will break. At least this one’s. The eyes must remain with the music as the hands somehow find their way to correct combinations of 88 keys. Not just once, mind you, but every single time the notes change, and in my experience, during the course of a single song, they change a lot.
Like many children, I was forced to endure after-school piano lessons. Three years’ worth, in my case. I didn’t enjoy and none of it stuck, other than the fingering to a little songs I memorized called, I believe, “The Birthday Song,” though it’s not the same song we sing to commemorate the birth of a loved one, which would actually be a useful tune to have committed to memory. No, this “Birthday Song” was one of those treacly music book exercises designed to bore children and annoy parents.
In sixth grade I quit the instrument, preferring to devote my time to more manly pursuits like musical theater. Years later, in college, I discovered an out-of-tune upright piano in a little-used practice room in the basement of my dorm. I used to bang away on it on occasion. In my adulthood, I bought a decent electronic keyboard to fool around on, but I mostly just liked that I could spin a dial and have it make phaser sounds.
Side note: my current piano does not make phaser sounds.
For a brief moment right after I bought the piano, and before the pandemic fully shut down the world, I took some lessons from a classically-trained neighbor who taught from her living room in the wilds of Connecticut. I met with her once a week for a few weeks as she steered me through “The Well-Balanced Clavier” and helped me figure out how to untangle my fingers from each other while doing the simplest things. By March, however, we decided it would be in the best interests of our mutual safety for me to discontinue the lessons until omnicron, or whatever variation we were enjoying at the moment, subsided. We never picked up our lessons again.
By the time the pandemic ended, we’d moved to Savannah, the piano broken down into pieces, shipped South, and reassembled in the bay window of our new old house. One of the first things I did after putting it put back together was to test how loudly it can be heard from the sidewalk in front of our home. Unfortunately loud. These old houses with their single glazed windows do almost nothing to keep in the heat or cold or butchered Beethoven.
If I could actually play the thing in a satisfactory manner, I would have no shame while performing impromptu concerts for those strolling by my Southern manse. As it is, I am always mildly ashamed to sit in that graceful bay window, my back to the street, plunking out incorrect note after incorrect note. Dogs cower. Children flee. The police have not yet been summoned, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time.
Over time, I have improved. I can read music, badly. I can play music, badly. But I can play. I remember Mo Rocca telling me about his own father who used to retire to his basement to practice trumpet every night after dinner. “Was he good?” I asked Mo. “Not really,” said Mo, “But he was very diligent.”
And that’s me, although it sounds like Mo’s dad has the advantage because I’m neither good nor diligent. I play when I can but we rent out our lower level as an AirBnB so, often times we have guests. We’ve tested the acoustics and it’s basically as if there is no floor separating us. If I can hear it, they can hear it. Which means my diligence is constricted by the vacation plans of strangers. In this way, my life is not so different from that of a Thai sex worker.
I persist because I love it. I love the sound of a piano and I love the mental challenge. I love the music. I love sitting down and playing notes written centuries ago. The idea that I can play something by Mozart or Bach or Satie is thrilling all on its own. My fingers tracing the same movements their fingers made to produce these same sounds. Not as well, and with none of the musicality. But still, playing music from the sheet is a bit like time-traveling. Which is cool. Also, when somebody calls me on the phone, as happened yesterday when I was practicing, I could say, “Hold on, I just need to stop playing Beethoven.” It’s an obnoxious and arrogant thing to say, which is why I felt the need to say it. And, by the way, I was playing that Beethoven pretty f’ing well, too, if butchering every fifth note can be said to be playing it “well.”
People often ask what you would save in a fire. Photos, keepsakes, passports, memories. I would save the piano. I would rush into my burning home and, using the super-human strength only available to those under tremendous duress, I would hoist that piano to my back and carry it to safety. Don’t ask me how I would fit through the doorway because I haven’t figured that part out yet; I’m merely illustrating my love for the hunk of mahogany-stained wood and fake ivory that fills my bay window.
The larger point is that there’s all this creative stuff out there and I have to believe that each of us has some innate desire to express one’s self in whatever manner they choose. Music, painting, drawing, writing. Whatever. I think that’s just part of who we are as people, which is strange when you think about it. Why would the creative impulse be so fundamental to our species? Other species don’t spend nearly as much time fooling with around Photoshop as we do. Too often, though, we squelch our own interests because we think we have no “talent” for something.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again – talent is overrated. Talent is usually little more than the shiny object that trains you to look in a certain direction. Perseverance counts for more than natural aptitude, and all of it pales behind desire. It is our desire to enjoy and to make beauty that makes humans human.
I have a strange and mystical little book called Terrible Glorious and Useful which says this:
“The antidote to doing time (living) wrong is this: to make it beautiful.”
That’s it. Just make beauty. Because that is why we are here. What is beauty? The author tells us:
“By beautiful we mean to cultivate the conditions of trust. To trust is to believe that. Beauty is the default.”
And that’s really it, isn’t it? Play piano. Paint a room. Draw a cartoon dog. Make beauty, however unbeautiful. Consider the opposite. Consider those who actively push away beauty or who do not care for it. Think about the worlds they make. Think about the trust, or lack of, they engender because they cannot see potential beyond utility. Consider how beauty might improve your own life and those around you. Then go out and buy a trumpet, and practice every night after dinner.
Playing piano might be a skill you lack, but writing is not. I absolutely love reading EVERYTHING you write.
Keep creating. No matter what.
I view Comedians as musicians that substitute words for notes. When they perform their "set" they have played their music in the form of WORDCRAFT. Every joke is a line of spoken music in a sense, with a cadence, a rhythm. A common thread through a comedy set is akin to a crafted musical stanza. Like a well written musical composition the written or spoken word will ebb and flow and aims to to trigger a reaction from those who listen to the performance. You may not have mastered the piano, but it seems to me you have mastered playing the instrument of your chosen craft.