Genesis

I’m guessing this could another phase in my OCD led life. I jest, well partly I jest. Too many people over the last few years have made one too many jokes about my compulsive tendencies. I grimace inwardly, I know the real monkey that rides my back. An unwelcome companion.

If many people say something does it make it true ???? hummm

I do obsess over things. Whatever it be:-

My newest enthusiasm.

An example; Triathlon, must train for the Ironman. The list goes on.

I become a closet expert on whatever grips me in the moment.

I also know that this manic phase then deserts me, as it will do for piano.

For now I live in the mania.

I’m hopeful however that even in the low times my wish to learn the piano will remain. For this is not a recent flight of fancy. It has been an irritating thorn and unreachable itch in my life for as long as I can remember.

I tried to live this through my daughter when she was 5 encouraging her to lessons, but it was not to be. I became, by osmosis, a dab hand at Ode to Joy and Good King Wenceslas and others.

Life intervened, the piano along with her mother left for pastures new, much happened and the itch subsided.

Now 20, my daughter smiles knowingly as I state my intention to learn the piano. How long will it last I imagine her thinking.

My piano education will start with hopeful progression through Alfred’s Basic Adult All-In-One Piano Course Book 1

By all means leave a message if you feel so inclined.

Well who knows, but here goes

Winkle, Snodgrass & Co

Nothing quite incapacitates a man like the flu. My other half chimes “it’s not the flu” but I certainly feel influenza ridden. Entrenched in a warm living room I have not ventured far today. Physically that is. In between bouts of coughing and shivering I have sought solace in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. A wonderful infusion of spell binding prose to carry me to long past comic times.

Interspersing coughing, reading, piano, reading, coughing, reading, piano my day has progressed.

Today has been a delightful piano day. Where do I start?

Well with the back seat I suppose. Alfred Book 1

I am spending less and less time on this at the moment due to exciting ventures. I am just about to start another blues ‘Blues for Wynton Marsalis’ on page 109. This does not grip me however like my other fare…

Solitude is practiced daily and continues to improve and become noticeably easier.

Following on I have fallen for Ludovico Einaudi’s Le onde Canzone Popolare

This piece beguiles me and leads me like a docile lamb to the cliff edge. I yearn for more. Today I have cracked the initial back of this piece being able to play it through HT. Now to improve the dynamics.

Because time is not my enemy today I have tentatively fiddled at the edges of the Ludovico Einaudi’s Limbo. A much more daunting proposition but I have been hooked.

Alas my cold remedy is having its somniferous effect and curtails further ebullience.

Adieu.

Trees

You can’t see the wood for the trees.

Looking in the mirror quizzically I contemplate that fact finally realising that perhaps I maybe I’m having a bout of depression.

Endeavouring to lift myself out of this mire I encourage myself with a positive mindset and a selection of tasks.

First however a summary of life to date.

My damaged knee is slowly mending but I have been referred to the surgeon by the physiotherapist as she is concerned by its lack of stability. Knowing the NHS that may mean a lengthy wait. However with my new positive outlook I will do some more cycling to strengthen the muscle. I will not sit on my ass, not so slowly, ballooning in size.

My dog starts his chemo on Wednesday. Potentially a life extending treatment but only if he has a quality of life during the process. I am sad but am looking forward with realism.

Christmas is coming apparently. I will duck. Hopefully it will miss me.

Work continues, my anxiety rises at the thought.

Fingers crossed, don’t speak to loud. A week may see me with a real digital piano instead of my trusty keyboard. Waiting and hoping.

Today I move on, a good practice session on the piano.

I have started a new piece

Ludovico Einaudi’s Le onde Canzone Popolare

And very much looking forward to the experience.

Alfred sees me on page 107 with a blues piece that I’m nearly ready to move on from.

Lastly ‘Solitude’ is at its peak relative to my ham fisted bashing. I shall be maintaining this piece as I adore it. My first real music.

My last playing of the piece this evening was a watershed. For the first time I felt deep within me a connection to the music. No wondering where my fingers should be going but a concern about musicality and phrasing. I was so smiling and skipping with joy inside.

I am pulling myself out of the darkness,

Scared

I have been in the company of many dead, I have known the dying. I have watched the world slow. I have felt the last beat, heard the last gasp, seen the chest fall. I have been in the silence that follows.

I have run the list of responses, breakdown to immunity. I have been all. I do not weep.

Yet these pent emotions now trickle out as I watch my pet. I have inhabited a different world today, part of everyday but also part of a different place. My partner notices.

I worry, why so tearful? This is a different me, an emotional me. Normally locked away in many boxes one inside the other. Each locked by an experience. Stronger than any key this is my vault.

I am not what people see. I am anxious to the point of inaction. They see laid back and calm.

I cover unhappiness with laughter and humour.

I engage socially but feel alone.

I am two people.

I am scared by what I have become.

No Words

A blogging hiatus courtesy of a broken laptop has left me floundering at sea for nearly two weeks.  This experience has reminded me how pervasive the internet has become in my day to day living, for I noticeably missed it most days.

You find me in miserable times, it is the middle of the night and I sit here with my dog Troy. I’m tearful, upset and on the edge of crying. Troy is dying. Our lovely, so active and happy friend is fading away with his lymphoma. He seems not himself tonight. He still has a quality of life but tonight, for the first time he does not look happy. I cry selfishly for he is unaware. I grieve.

I cannot really enthuse about much else. The last couple of days have found me for the first time hardly touching the keyboard but for the record I am on ‘Got those Blues’ in Alfred and am trying to get up to tempo and am also continuing with ‘Solitude’, though I feel it may now be time to move on from that piece.

The rain hammers down, running off the windows, gurgling down the storm drain. I wish it to wash me away.

I sit staring at the screen, fingers poised. My mind not. I have run out of words.

Wonder and Beauty

Listening to others frustrations, hurt, disinterest and apparent misery regarding their piano playing as publicly expressed I thought it time to reassess myself.

Why am I learning?

Why am I not?

This is probably the easier to answer.

Not for a career, not for studies, not to pass grades, not to play the most difficult pieces, not for critical praise and not for others.

So I guess that initially makes me predominantly a selfish person without goals.

So why am I learning?

What am I looking for?

What do I want out of it?

I’m not sure I have the answers but I wish to enjoy the journey. I wish to look back occasionally and reflect on good things past. I wish to express through music. I wish to add colour to my life and if I’m really fortunate that of others. I wish to have greater understanding and perhaps the occasional contented moment following my own pedagogy fumbling.  I wish for new friendships. I wish for wonder and beauty. I wish to be more at peace.

What I realise is that I need not be a good pianist to achieve my goals.  For that I am grateful, for I do not wish to be a greater pianist tomorrow if it makes me less happy than I was yesterday.

Unashamedly something borrowed

“The woods would be a very quiet place if the only birds that sang were the ones that sang best”.

How to keep your web surfers?

The headline has it, menu bar to the left. Your photographs should be large and contextually important, not just beautiful.  Keep it simple and uncluttered.

According to this piece of BBC VT then I need to work harder to keep the odd surfer from clicking away. I have at most a second to grab them.

They may be right, in fact I’m sure they have a plethora of evidence to confirm their analysis but to my mind beauty has its own quality and strangely my sites primary function isn’t to inform others.

It helps me.

It’s that soundboard that I turn to at 3am when all others are asleep. As now, awake, listening to the winds blustery passage past our home. Feeling the dog shake cuddled beside me deep in some canine dream.  A time that demons rise is the time that any helping hand is reached for.

Anniversary

As befits the occasion of my first anniversary, well the first month I have purchased a present.

Alfred’s Basic Adult All in One Piano Course – Book 2

Now of course it will have to stay tucked away for some time yet until I’m competent but it is nevertheless ready.

As I reflect on the last month, a month where for various reasons I have had more free time than normal, I can justly say I am thoroughly enjoying the piano learning experience. I have never undertaken anything that causes time to advance so quickly. This has nearly caught me out a few times after I had promised to complete the more mundane of house working tasks.

So what lies ahead, well hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will get my current piece ‘Solitude‘ something like it. Progress ahead in Alfred and then look forward to my first Einaudi score.

Long term I’m still saving for a proper digital piano, a slow process but I will get there.

A long lost uncle’s estate leaving me his piano would also work.

Alas the saving, penny by penny, appears the more realistic avenue.

Mirror Mirror

I managed to play with some hesitations and wrong notes ‘Solitude’ through from start to finish today. There is still plenty of work to be done on getting the first 2 lines of page 3 sorted but it is getting there.

Wish I could say the same about my knee, the last couple of days have seen a marked increase in the pain. I’d better mention it to the physio. I slyly peak in the mirror and spy disintegration.

Our pet dog came back from his operation this afternoon surprisingly spritely. Now we wait.

Tomorrow I celebrate my one month anniversary; I will celebrate with another painting.

Lost

Well here I am, piano practice having gone well. I can play the first two pages of ‘Solitude’ something like it now. Today I have began the attack on page three. At least the style is now known to me so this should be a little easier.

I have started a list of other projects I wish to undertake. The list of sheet music is getting noticeably longer.

My knee seems to have suffered a setback this afternoon. A couple of episodes of acute pain whilst walking causing a stumble and then a hobble back home, damn it.

My dog has to have a GA and a biopsy tomorrow to investigate his problems. I am not hopeful. We will see.

I have had my share of grief, I could do without more. I have become accustomed to dealing with it. I am a pint half full person. I remember the good times and am thankful for them. This is how I survive.

I allow myself to get lost in the music. Perhaps that it wrong. I for the first time open myself up to the music and allow it to enter me. This is a new experience for me and one that I am greatly enjoying.

Unusually the image I have chosen doesn’t relate to the post. I just find it beautiful and that is my counterpoint to the sadness that is in me.

I end with the words of the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

Post

Like a child with a new unopened toy I am so full of excitement. My ‘Best of Ludovico Einaudi’ has arrived in the post. A magnificent collection of sheet music, in an appropriately luxurious covered volume.

Most of the pieces are way above my comprehension never mind ability but happily ‘Le Onde Canzone popolare’ seems attainable.

I now have a plan; this piece is now next on my list of ‘next to learn’ after ‘Solitude’.

I have taken onboard the advice of DN off the Piano World forum on setting myself small incremental goals and being more specific in my practice. It’s early days yet but I feel an improvement already.

I have not forgotten Alfred and understand the learning of this material is like the foundation of a house, it must been done but I am allowing myself a slight detour along the way.

I am minded of the words of the Dalai Lama

People take different roads seeking fulfilment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.