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A quote: “It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.” ~~ Walter Lippmann
I’ll start with a story …
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‘Play it again, Sam.’
Chuckles from the dark. I hear it at least once a night, usually after midnight. After the couples leave and it’s just the lonely, the drunks and the ones trying sober up before furtively slipping out.
The lights are dim, the air is smoky and I lose myself in the playing. Old school, some jazz, pieces from old masters unpersoned that mom taught me on the sly.
My pay is the pleasure of touching a real piano – plus tips. Each night the grace of song, a benediction of music. I risk it all to be here.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, from Adobe stock, standard license.
Andrew says: I am a competent sous chef. Right now I am chopping onions with a razor sharp kitchen knife. My wife is telling me to hurry before the garlic burns.
In the other room, daughter number four is filling the house with postmodern screeching and devastating key pounding. When we had only one, I would have stopped the noise. With two I would have left the kitchen. With three my hands would be cut up from the chopping.
But now I barely notice it. It is with uninterrupted concentration that I am slashing up this onion.
This is not lost on my wife.
“Should we have another?” she asks.
When we fight, she runs out of the room and starts banging on the piano. The noise drives us crazy, so we stop our bickering and go to her. With tears in her eyes, she pretends that we aren’t at her side. She continues pushing down on the keys. She stops. We both kneel next to her and tell her that some day she may be a great pianist. She looks at each of us and smiles. Then, she turns away and again begins hammering the keyboard.
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