My mom had an old Gulbransen piano. In a dark room back in the farthest corner of the house. Tucked away with a hoarder's fair of other things in piles all around, items shoved in the closet, stacked in heaps; clutter and chaos seemingly organized and purposefully placed. I loved that piano from the earliest point of my life that I can remember. Not only did I love it, I felt like I was a part of it and it was a part of me somehow. Metal, wood and strings, golden letters, mahogany finish, ivory keys, some chipped, some a little crooked. Mom played hymns for weekly church services on Sundays and I would watch and listen any time I heard her practicing. I would sit beside her, watch as her hands moved, watched her looking at the notes out of an old hymnal that never left the piano. Eventually, she started showing me a few things; how to identify the notes on the page "Middle C, you can find every other note from Middle C if you just know where IT is." Middle C became my home base for everything else that layered thereafter. Center of the piano. Great place for both of your thumbs to lightly lay, ready at a moment's notice, either side left or right, to strike that familiar, comforting sound that only Middle C can vibrate. She didn't teach me a lot of things, because as was typical, the more she tried telling me what to do, the more I resisted her telling me what to do. Defiant to a fault. Independent. I wanted to let my own soul figure it out. I felt like somewhere deep inside I already KNEW. The piano had somehow told me about everything I needed to know about the language of music and its beautiful voice that speaks across waters, through the universe, from one culture to the next. I didn't need it "explained" to me.
She lovingly let it go. Let me just fumble and bumble and try to sort it out on my own. I kept watching my hands, watching how they could be efficient in their movements on the keys. One way leads to too much effort, another way seems easy.
Over the years, I received six months of lessons as a gift from my grandmother and aunt and learned to love a woman named Mrs. Wanda Derry. She gave me books. She gave me patience and understanding. She gave me a sense of calm and quiet peacefulness. And she challenged me to push myself to new levels and to keep going even past those points and plateaus. Six months wasn't long, but it was long enough to be a foundation that has never cracked, moved, or faltered.
I eventually came to where I am today. I no longer have my piano, but instead a guitar or two that has the same ability to take me into another world, away from pressures and worries and fears. During my last lesson, I figured out one of my missing pieces in my understanding of music. I know there are several missing pieces in music theory that I have totally missed that if I knew, I think I would have a new sense of empowerment and an ability to arrive at yet another peak. I'm getting there. I can feel it. During my last lesson, the teacher showed me major keys (the sounds that make "happy" noises) and the relationship to their relative minor keys (the sounds that make "sad" noises). He explained the way to find the relative key is six units (notes) away. Just like the theory with people... being separated by six degrees. We're all inter-connected in a web so close, just as musical notes are bound together. Within those two keys; a major and its relative minor, you can play the same notes within any chord combination and nothing you play is "wrong" or sounds as if it doesn't fit. I don't know if I am explaining it properly or effectively, but all of a sudden I saw something, FELT something I hadn't felt before. Yin and yang, beautifully portrayed in sound. Happy and sad are the same, they just begin and end in a different place, six degrees away from one another. Nothing is "wrong" inside either, it's simply part of the music, part of the sound of a song. We have this complex matrix of different options, different choices, different directions we can take, maybe... just maybe no matter what choice becomes the right one in accordance with our lives, with what has gone before and what is coming up next. It's beautiful. And it's grace, knowing that if you are doing your best, (and aren't we all?) whatever step you take next, whether up or down or sideways, as long as you're carried on a wave that is part of your authentic self, the choice is perfect.
I'm so thankful my mom didn't force her knowledge on me. I'm so thankful she simply opened up a door and then let me go and let me explore what is beyond, waiting for me to discover and uncover in my way and in my time. I don't think it would have been so hugely impacting being told to a young me who hadn't yet experienced what the older me has.
"Life is a song. Love is the music." ~ unknown
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