Love Thursday: Excuse Me, but Can I Be You For Awhile?
I remember the wife of one of our farm hands coming over to give me lessons.
"Curve your hands, don't let them lay flat like a pancake!"
I still have all my old piano books. They are stored in a box, along with my dolls and stuffed animals that I couldn't give up.
I kept playing as I grew up, but I didn't really have a choice in the matter. My mom never played, and always wished she'd learned. My father had been given lessons early on (by his mother), and he finally took up stick ball and didn't keep up with the practice. He also said his hands got 'too big'. I believe this. At 49, he was 6'5" and 240 lb.
Me? I hated theory. I hated practicing. I hated giving up afternoons to drive to a nearby towns to practice. yet. again. And oh, how I hated the recitals. Getting up to play "Fur Elise" in front of a crowd full of bored parents and crying siblings? Ugh.
And then church! Living in a small town, if you could play, you'd get stuck playing anything from "specials on Sunday" to "ooops, can you play for the Choir?". I would give up my Wednesday nights to sit in the Church Fellowship Hall, playing another round of "How Great Thou Art". By playing those 'specials', though, you earned a sweet little note from Pearl or Mabel. They would tell you what a wonderful job you did, and how you absolutely made the Lord very happy. I still have those notes saved. Pearl passed away recently. She was my 3-4 year old Sunday School teacher, as well.
I loved the piano, but I hated it, still. I wanted to do other things. I wasn't necessarily GOOD at those other things, but anything other than sitting down, back straight, hands curved. And I'm not even sure I was good at that. In fact, I wasn't. I liked playing the piano with a leg up on the piano bench ...
In High School, my dad saw a poster on the school wall advertising for a piano player for a local family museum. Not just any museum, of course. This museum required you to dress up like a Can-Can Dancer and play Ragtime tunes. Had I even in my life played Joplin? No. But I'm great at bullshitting. During my audtion, I sight read "12th Street Rag" and got the job.
And for the new few summers, I dressed like this and played the piano in the summers for the Can-Can shows:
My Junior and Senior Year in High School, I drove an hour and half north to a small town to meet with a woman who would later become my maid of honor in my wedding. She taught my voice and piano lessons. And yet again, I hated Theory and chose to sight read my way through all of my music. Much easier that way, I deducted.
And with that thought process, I won a lot of competitions and knocked out some pretty big piano pieces. I went to college. I got a nice piano, vocal and (okay) theater scholarship. I got to college, and thought, "You know, I don't want to do this". And I think had I been bold enough to tell my parents this, they would have shot me dead.
I was tired of playing the piano.
There was a classmate of mine who played Billy Joel. And she blew me away every time. I remember listening to her play during a school Talent Show, and I cried. I'd never seen such passion in piano playing. (Sidenote: Dinah died two years ago in a horrible car accident, but when I wrote her parents to express my sympathies, I talked about that night she played). My dorm roommate played like an angel, too. Still does. Leads the music worship team for the church she attends in Kansas
I didn't have that. To them, it just came naturally. To me, I wanted to have fun, play what felt right, not be told what to play and how to play it. In a way, I felt like Tori Amos. And why? She went to school, she didn't dig the vibe, she got kicked out. She was my hero. And around this time, she had just released "Little Earthquakes". So, of course, every song spoke to my 'tortured soul'.
"You see, I'm not music theory smart. To me, it's an internal, instinctive thing. It's like, I don't care if this is making mathematical sense, I am not creaming. If I'm really honest, looking back, I wanted my father to be proud of me. But I couldn't do it in that way, because it has to be in your soul to be a great concert pianist." ~ Tori Amos
I decided to give up on piano, but stick with vocal. I got a part in the musical "Into the Woods" during Iterim Break, and I had a blast. I also met a very cute college boy with a sweet Oklahoma draaaawl who told me "you got nice eyes". My knees buckled, the Earth moved, and I fell a tiny bit in love then with a guy named Matt from Oklahoma.
Fast forward a few years - I am out of college. I still played for weddings.
But, only one funeral was for a very dear, old friend of mine named Melvin. He drove the CO-OP truck, would come to our home and refill the propane, etc. We'd see him coming and say, "Sweet Melvin!". He'd bring suckers to myself and my brother. Sweet, of course, because he was sweet, but that was his last name, as well. He was a deacon in my church. And the last time I saw him before he died, he said, "Please sing and play for my funeral". I told him I would. Was one of the hardest things I've done, but I did it for Melvin.
I started writing music. I started expressing myself through lyrics and song. I spent hours at the piano, making music I thought someday would turn me into the next Tori, the next someone.
And one day ... I just quit. I put together my song books and I put them away. I had a beautiful piano to play, but I didn't. I burned out again. I got busy with a new baby and keeping up with life. Sitting down at the piano didn't feel right. I felt forced again to make right with something I'd let go.
But lately ...
I've been feeling the need to sit, and introduce myself to my piano. Quietly. Sometimes in the middle of the day, when the house is silent, I sit down on the bench and think. I don't play; I just think.
I think about the time I was playing "Sea of Love" and my dad stood in the doorway of the room in my old house, against the door jam, just listening. He'd gotten up from his office chair, walked down the hall, to my room to listen. And I'm reminded that even through all the wrong notes and "apologies" for the obvious technical mistakes I was making, he didn't care. He loved listening to me play.
And I'm reminded that at one time - a long time ago - it was therapeutic to play. That it was a conversation between myself and an instrument, that my hands would play the notes and my mind would think of other things, and make sense of those things.
And that words moved the heart to move the pen and write songs that made me feel better, to put said emotions into perspective. And that now - maybe again - those feelings are stirred and need to be recorded once more...
Labels: dad, love thursday, piano, tori amos
