For the Love of Music
My first commited relationship came when I was around 6. You may think there is something very wrong with where this might go but you are so very demented…
I fell in love with music from the second I knew what it was.. I believe that in the womb I was attuned to it like it was part of the nutrients fed to me through the umbillical.
Around six my mother was given an upright, black laquer, Schumann piano. It was the most beautiful thing I’d had ever seen. She told me it was not to be played with until I got a little older to understand what I was to do with it. And at that point I knew that I had already decided I was going to fuck around with it.. A)because she told me not to and B) I felt a sort of force pulling me in.
Time went by and I would listen to my brothers place chop sticks and heart and soul. And I thought there had to be more to this.. the organ player at church did waaaay more with her fingers than chop sticks. So I secretly played around with some different ways to play heart and soul. I remember at the time there was a song by Phil Collins.. Groovey Kinda Love?? Anyway I decided to sound out the tune in my head and play it on the piano until it sounded like the chorus from the song.
My mother wanted to know who was on the piano because it was interrupting her phone conversation and she entered the room to find it was her 6 year old child pecking away at the ivory keys. Within that next week I was signed up for piano lessons at the church we attended. I learned how to read music and played sonatinas at age 8. I was on my way.. except I had bad follow through with practice. I KNEW WHAT I WAS FUCKING DOING! :P
Later that year I was enrolled in a school of fine arts. There were several areas that could be chosen for your talent. Music, Dance (Eww), and Drama (Ewwwww). Ofcourse I was entered in the Music aspect. Kudos to my instructor Ms. Fines for helping me get into this school…there was a long waiting list. And I was for the first time IN LOVE. I was able to tickle the ivories.. experiment with Violin, Viola, and Cello.. oh the beautiful, cello. My music teacher said I was a very special person (she never referred to me as a child). So for that entire year of 3rd grade I was inhaling the sweet sound of pure music. Music that I made on my own……..
Ms. Fines passed away from complications of something I knew nothing about. She was there… and then she wasn’t. And so was my love for the music made. I started failing my regular classes and had to be transferred to another school. A school where the arts were not respected. My spirit had been crushed.. I stopped playing piano almost 20 years ago..
The music lives in me. It wants bleed. And I feel that need to let it be alive once more. Heh. My mom still has that old upright piano at her house. Needs a lot of work but it’s still got some shine.
In closing…. I’m looking for a cello.. I’m looking for someone who can teach me once more how to read the music.. I have forgotten. But my natural talent and ability to listen and play by ear has NEVER left me.
“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” -Johann Sebastian Bach
