“
St. Petersburg Junior College, Second Semester Piano, 1973: Ahoy! Dangerous
Icebergs Ahead! “
05/11/12
To my very, dear, dear friend, ‘Strenuba’,
The Saga Continues!
By the time I had signed up for the second semester
of piano at St. Petersburg Junior College in the spring of 1973, my instructor,
Ruth Watson, and I were face to face with a number of Chimeras, both
separately, and together. Quiet, and mild-mannered Ruth had her reputation as a
piano instructor to maintain, as well as her reputation, in general.
She and I had—in the previous semester—had, in fact,
played a giant hoax, a musical ‘Ponzi’ scheme upon the entire music department
(students, and instructors, all), for at about
a third of the way into the semester, she realized—hopelessly—that I
simply could not learn to read music; it was worse that sweating bullets. As the term progressed, in abject horror, she
discovered that I was merely watching her play, whenever she lost patience with
my remembered, elementary school level exposure to ‘music’; her humor was not
improved to learn that I had bought a record of the Polonaise I so wanted to
play, and was listening to it at home, over, and over, and over again.
Well-before the start of second term, she had
already resigned herself to the nail-biting knowledge that she had hitched her
wagon to a poseur, a dummy, an idiot savant, minus the savant part.
We all got our grades at finals by performing our
chosen pieces before ‘Jury’, comprised of all the music instructors, plus their
students. And while many hesitantly
played simple offerings tentatively, as if afraid of the piano, or the
audience, or both, I—in a kind of youthful hubris had chosen as my piece, a Chopin
Polonaise: Opus 40, the Polonaise ‘Militaire’, which in its complexity, simply
blew the doors off everyone else.
For the second time down the rabbit hole, what was I
to choose? Chopin being a hard act to follow; never mind, the bar had already
been set too high by myself; there was no one else to blame.
The stairs leading up to the stage of the music
auditorium were—in fact—not unlike those leading to the guillotine, and I
suppose that were one to place one’s head inside the piano case, and then let
the lid fall full force upon the neck, it would, somehow, be sufficient to
render one headless.
I had already experienced a horrible case of
‘crash-and-burn’, when I went to a friend’s recital, to watch him play that old
saw, “In A Persian Market”. For a while, he managed to hold his own, until the
unthinkable happened; from either having to ‘perform’ in public, or in being
ill-prepared, at one point, he simply stopped playing, sitting there, looking
at his outstretched hands; his mind, a complete, and utter, and horrible
blank. For fifteen minutes all was
quiet, as he sat there. My toes began to
curl up in my shoes, and if there is such a thing as living death, brother, he
had found it in spades.
Just as people who in sympathy, nevertheless began
to grab their coats, the damn of memory somehow broke, and he replayed it AGAIN
from the beginning, with sweat dripping from his face, and a kind of lost,
mindlessly hysterical look on his face; one I shall never forget, ever.
Anyhoo, I guess we all must choose our own paths to
perdition; I obviously having not learned that most valuable lesson, called,
‘vamp ‘til infinity, wherein, if one suddenly loses all track of what’s being
played, one either tries to gracefully end the piece (not unlike trying to land
a 747 with only one engine working), or, one just makes up shit, until one can
skip hastily off the stage, and into oblivion.
Its best to have a running, waiting car there to make good one’s escape.
For my second dose of piano STD, I again rather
rashly chose—this time—a nocturne by Chopin, Opus 50, #2 (I think) in F-minor,
a most beautiful, and simple piece until the end, where I did notice a LOT of
little notes all bunched up. “Oh well”,
I said disarmingly, ”I’ll worry about that later. And, indeed, with Ruth’s kind
help, and in listening to the recording, I was able to memorize the nocturne;
the memorization was never difficult, but the attempt to actually ‘read’ the
notes were.
Remember about all that jumble of notes I mentioned
before the end? That meant a lot of very
fast, and precise playing, and there, I was stuck, a gone gosling, a dead duck,
for the notes were to complex for me to count up the lines, as I would have
done in third grade.
Both Ruth and I knew we were cut off, and in deepest
shit, no less; for this semester, in addition to the Nocturne, I had to ‘sight
read ’a piece ( which plainly I was genetically unable to do), and to play
scales.
And, since I could not play the end of the Nocturne,
Ruth and devised a plan, whereby at a seemingly casual, and arbitrary signal,
she would interrupt my playing, saying, “O.K., that’s enough.” Or, had I left
to my own devices, I would have, at some point, gone over the Falls in a barrel
of our combined making.
And so, dear Bryan, I began to play those languid, liquid
notes of Chopin, carefully, ever watching for Ruth to save my ass.
Sometimes, the Fates pause to smile and to forgive
such youthful recklessness, and…right on target, she stopped me, well-before I
had made a spectacle of myself, in front of God and all, and I left the piano,
suffused in a kind of sweat that unleashed the predatory responses in lions,
and, amid actual applause I did not in any way deserve, I left to have my grade
determined by the music faculty, and was somewhat surprised, though, pleased,
nonetheless, when they gave me another ‘A’.
Both Ruth and I laughed about it later, me, more
than she, for once again, we had successfully engineered a true, ‘fate
d’copmplie’. Her reputation remained
intact, while I wisely headed for the hills…well, maybe not so wisely, since in
1975, I foolishly challenged the Oxford Entrance Exam, in English Lit.
Why in hell I thought I had a chance is beyond me,
and I am now thoroughly inclined to lay all such wild antics at the feet of
reckless youth, wherein myself, and others of that age tackled the most
improbable of ventures, in a ignorance of youthful bliss, without ever
reckoning up the costs of failure. As I recall, we just went on to bigger, more
elaborate projects, sure that we would succeed.
If age has taught me to be more wary, in trade, is
an exuberance that knew no shame.
I hope this may prove to bring some lightness to
your day, dear, Byran, and I ever hope you feel better, and much-improved.
Love,
Charles.
