I have been challenged!
As you have noticed (or not, since you forgot I exist), I haven’t been writing. So, I asked my friend Bethany to challenge me to write about something. What did she tell me to write about? Precisely the thing that I will spend wayyyy too much time on: music.
So I’ve decided to accept her challenge and write about music. What it is to me, what I play, what I listen to, and where I want to go with it. Here’s the deal though: this is going to be way too long to put in one post. So, I’m going to split it up and answer one question from that list at a time. Brace yourselves, friends. This is going to be completely different from what I usually write.
See you on the other side. I hope.
* * *
So, what is music to me? Well, that’s a complicated question to answer. Growing up, music was my parents’ trade, so to speak. It was what they did when they went to work. When I was very young, I didn’t connect that to the wonderful sounds they made with their voices, at the piano, or in the office with that gentle beast of an instrument –the double bass– that my dad played. I didn’t understand that the abilities they used to entertain me were also what was putting food on the table. (I distinctly remember confusing the words “musician” and “magician” as a young child and asking my mom which one was she again?) Music was just an accepted part of life in my childhood, like the fact that we spoke English in our house, or walked on two feet.
When I was three, my dad tried to teach me violin. He got me one of those tiny little student instruments, and I spent half an hour or so in his office every day (or at least, that’s what it seemed like), scraping away at the thing while he told me what to do. I learned “Mississippi hot dog” and proudly showed anyone who would listen. The lessons didn’t last long though. I think I was kind of a difficult child, and my dad is not the most patient person in the world. The violin sat in the office for years, untouched. At that point, music was frustrating and mostly meaningless exercise, and I wasn’t ready to be a musician yet.
When I was six, I began piano lessons. My teacher was a family friend, a fabulous pianist with perfect pitch and a Tennessee accent. I remember my first lesson: she traced my hands onto a sheet of paper and numbered the fingers. (I still have that paper.) That was when music became exciting. I enjoyed sitting at the piano, and learning how to actually play the thing I’d been staring at for years. I even wrote a song a few months later. (And yeah, I’ll play it for you… if you ask nicely.) At that point, music was a newly discovered adventure…kind of like chapter books.
But the novelty wore off, and, for a while, music became a chore. I didn’t want to practice, I didn’t want to study theory, I didn’t want to hear about Zachary Zeal and his love for staying inside and practicing while his friends played soccer. (And that was a real story my parents made me listen to. Seriously.)
Long story short, somewhere between then and now, music came to life. Somewhere between mindlessly plunking John Thompson tunes and improvising my heart out on the piano, music became important. It might have been when my parents got me an electric keyboard for Christmas, which got me composing; it might have been when I started playing the cello, at the age of twelve; it might have been earlier, or later. I don’t know. And really, it doesn’t matter.
So here’s the short answer to the question of what music is to me: Music is the boy next door– we were friends for years but one day I fell in love.
* * *
So, bored yet? I don’t know if anything I just wrote is in the least bit interesting. You know, I feel like I’m writing this for myself than for anyone else, really. It’s all stuff I’ve thought about, but never articulated. …Wait a second! I know what this is! Ohh dear. I’m seventeen and I’m writing a memoir.
This is your fault, Bethany.
Well, anyway, this section is done. Obviously I have more to say, but that can be covered in the following posts. I’ll try not to be so nostalgic from now on, okay? Deal? Deal.
