first post

Now that blogging is going out of existence (at least as a cutting-edge form of self-expression), I thought I'd join up. It's the height of egoism to think that I'd have anything to share that would be written in any kind of worthwhile, erudite way - I know: I've kept diaries, and, re-reading them, cringed at the immaturity, self-importance, and egoism there on every page. I'm sure I've got more of the same coming.

But as a journal of day-to-day life, it may be useful for me to write, if not for anyone to read. And, as a husband and father, I'm seasoned, conditioned, tamed. I know the value of an hour now. And little moments of freedom are exquisite in the moment of experiencing them.

Just today, I visited a coffeehouse for half an hour, where I got steamed milk with amaretto (my stomach gets irritated by caffeine - either a mark of old age, or a sign of being in touch with my body - I'll leave it up to the reader to decide) and took a seat. I pulled up a document on Matlab's implementation of neural networks. Joy! To have to freedom to direct my mind here, simply because I decided to. Not for any commercial consideration, or acting in concert with my family, or my job. The dog was off the leash. My mind breathed freely for awhile.

While I was there I noticed young people, having their conversations about music, just as I used to.(It was all so important! Back then I might end a friendship based on someone's musical tastes.) One girl was talking to a young man across their table, and her hand was poised on her lap in piano position, as if she constantly had to be in musical character. The young man said "You were thinking about Fleetwood Mac" and she laughed. She's very beautiful, and he's kind of shlubby, not too much so - if he took care of himself instead of devoting all his time to sedentary musical activities and a sit-down job, he'd look good enough to compel her romantic sensibilities. He probably wishes he could, but doesn't have a clue that that sandwich he's eating is giving him a gluten sensitivity that's interfering with his fat metabolism. And he should know that being in love with music is going to make it harder for him to get a partner. Screamingly obvious to me, and he's blind to it all. He probably thinks he's inventing all of this as he goes along - moving to Denton to study music, and compelled to spend time with women. Compelled to work to pay the bills. Compelled to sleep to keep himself together.
It can get hard to smile after enough years of this kind of frustration.

And he doesn't realize, that, if he marries, things get harder and more frustrating, but in a different and unimagined way. Musical barriers yield themselves to years of technical acquisition, but there's no time to play or compose, or rehearse or perform, because the wife asserts her needs, and those needs cost the musical husband everything he ever sought to accomplish.

***********************************************************************

I had a very beautiful start to the day. The house was dark, it was 5:05, and I decided to play my electronic keyboard that used to belong to my nephew. It's got two stuck keys, from when my daughter got frustrated and smashed the keyboard with her little fists. And the action is incredibly light, which I don't prefer, but with good technique it doesn't matter. I was thinking of something I'd read by Sidney Lanier, the 19th-c American poet, that if poetry is like a painting to be viewed by sunlight, then music is like a painting to viewed by moonlight. That's a good thought to begin the day with, as I moved through my darkened house with a copy of A Dozen A Day, a volume of very simple piano music. I couldn't read it in the dark, but, I thought, I could let the notes that I couldn't read suggest music to me that I could play, and it all turned out very beautifully. I played an Alberti bass on the chords C major, Aflat augmented, and F minor, and in the right hand I played the C harmonic major scale (look it up on Wikipedia if you aren't familiar with it: it's rich in harmonic implications). I found that as I directed my mind to hold the left-hand accompanying pattern together, I freed up my right hand to come with musical ideas that my conscious mind could never have dreamed up. More than thirty years after my first piano lessons, I found a way to improvise! I could never have thought my way into this - I had to feel my way in. And for all the simplicity of the left hand, it was a very instructive time for me. I kept the sound light and consistent by imagining that there was a string suspending my left arm, and kept my left hand in view - if I began looking at what my right hand was doing, the left would mess up the pattern, and the right hand would stop being creative. It was as if God was giving me a lesson in improvisation, and piano playing, at the same time. I felt like Vladimir Horowitz and Bill Evans, rolled up into one human being playing.

When I stopped, it was 5:55, and time to wake up my wife. Time to feed to dogs and let them out into the yard. Time to check the weather, and shave, and take a shower, dress, and greet my incredible daughter as she wakes up.

I can feel my musical ancestors, my great-uncles, smiling.