Day one hundred and fourteen

A lovely blustery walk on the crazy empty beach, cold wind slicing through us, as my friend and I walked, arms linked, after a long lazy lunch in Gloucester.

wind manifested as sand

This morning I was lying in bed watching the delirious wind gust and blow into the room, fashioning the curtain into a horizontal billow at times parallel with the ceiling.  Then I noticed the shimmering area where the water of the birdbath on the deck is reflected on the ceiling, which is often very pretty to watch.  As I contemplated this phenomenon, I noticed how a strong gust of wind augmented and blurred the light.  I have no idea of the physics of this refraction, but I made a little movie of the experience.

My piano teacher suggested I write about the dragon piano teacher of my formative years, as therapy, in the hopes that it will free my sight-reading block.

When I was eight years old my best friend began piano lessons with a teacher who also taught her two older brothers.  Our families being so close, I too was duly enrolled with  Mrs Douglas, who lived in a little house almost halfway between our two houses, so all the children could happily walk to and from their lessons.  Except that my walk was never happy, but a foot-dragging, sore-stomached death-march, every Tuesday afternoon.

I think my friend and her brothers were more musical than I was, or they were tougher, or she liked them better, or their mother made certain that their nails were always neatly trimmed.  As far as I know they all did fine with her, but I did not fare as well.

Firstly, my nails seemed to grow at an alarming rate.  Mrs Douglas shouted at me every week because my nails made clicking sounds on the keys, and it seemed that they did that even if I had just had them cut!  (I was unable to cut my own nails as nail-clippers had not yet made it to South Africa, or if they had,  definitely not to our house, so although I could easily cut the nails of my left hand with the little nail scissors, my left hand behaved in a distinctly spastic manner when I attempted to do the same to my right hand nails.)

One day the dragon just grabbed me, pulling me on to her lap, where she proceeded to snip off my nails herself, with such little care that several of my fingers lost their tips too.  I remember leaving little bloody smudges on the keys, mingled with salty tears too, but she didn't seem to mind any of that.  At least there was no confounded CLICKING! 

Secondly, I never learned to sight-read.  So I dutifully learned all the letters of the notes, and about crotchets and quavers and semi-quavers and breves, etc..

All Cows Eat Grass, the spaces of the bass clef.

 What is it with all the good boys?  Don't good girls deserve fun too? (It was fun, not fruit, the way we learnt it.)

Perhaps I was so intimidated by Mrs Douglas that I memorized all the pieces very quickly and therefore didn't have to read, or I was so traumatized by having my fingers mangled that I just blocked out the usual process in which "every good boy deserves fun" gradually becomes "egbdf" and then imperceptibly becomes a note you see as you read all the notes along the bar.  This development is similar to how accomplished readers read the word "bed" without sounding out each letter, B... E....D, without even realising that the word is composed of these familiar letters, recognising instead the shape of the word, their eyes flying along to the next word almost before their brains comprehend the word "bed".

And thirdly, I am a failed composer.  I was so excited by the fact that these squiggles on the page made music when you played them on the piano that I wrote several little songs on the blank staff paper which I was given on which to do my homework.  I used quavers and minims and even dotted notes.  And there were words that I sang to go along with the music as I played.  I proudly presented my best composition, "A Queer Little Song", at my next lesson, only to have it pulled to pieces, almost literally, by the grumpy old Mrs Douglas.  Thinking back to this, I was doing brilliantly, actually using what I was learning, and she destroyed all that creativity and enthusiasm.  I never composed another song.

Having come back to the piano after forty years, I am in love with Chopin, with my beautiful Kawai piano, with the delight of rediscovering my fingers' ability to bring forth melody, emotion, passion.

But I still can't sightread well.  I spend long frustrating moments going through "all cows eat grass" in my head to get to "g", or counting down the lines to get to the bottom "b" of the bass clef.  I still have an excellent memory and so once I know a piece it is in my head and my fingers, and the music on the page means almost nothing to me, I can barely find my place if  I get lost in my head.  It is quite bizarre, because I am so willing to learn, so frantic to learn, but my old brain just refuses to improve.