I would ride the bus downtown to Hauer Music store and reluctantly sit and wait my turn to show my teacher what I had learned and then supposedly practiced the previous week. It was the same story week after week. No improvement. Just the squeaks and squeals as I tried to fight my way thru for that miserable half hour. But that's what happens when you don't practice, when you don't try to learn.....No results.
But that was me then. A kid always looking for adventure but not really wanting to make the sacrifices necessary to produce positive results. It was how I looked at things. It was my perspective.
Today, though things were different.
Some 60 years later as I waited all week long for my first piano lesson that would take place later in the day at my new teacher, Amy Munro's, home, I would find something I would later describe to a friend as beautiful. I was truly in another zone as I focused, something I have to really fight to do, on learning every thing she was saying, everything she was showing me, and everything in my new study book.
I know thousands and thousands of you have taken piano and music lessons before and many of you are, I'm sure, quite accomplished at it.
But for me, this was a breakthrough. This was me learning to do something I wanted if for no other reason than to simply hear the music of my own creations.
Sure I have sat down at the piano hundreds of times and hit the keys and heard the reverberating sounds. I've even written about it before on occasion.But that was just sound. That was a wave of pressure as the vibration went through the air.
But I was so focused. I was so enthralled with the genius design of such a wonderful instrument that instead of my counting the minutes until my lesson ended as when I was a young lad learning the clarinet, now I almost heartbroken that my short time had come to an end.
Do I make more out of this than what it really is?... Not in my mind.
Nope, not on drugs, not early dementia, not overly tired, none of those things. I truly felt I was part of the key as it simply struck a C# string (see how smart I'm getting!).
I don't care why I felt this way. All I know is I did. And, I want more. I want more and more and more. Maybe it's the loneliness and I want music and sound in my life. I don't know.
I do know I loved the passion. I loved the passion I felt for making my own sounds.
No, this won't be another past failed episode in the life of a little Skeeter boy. This was too real.
Anyway, you asked....so there it is.....and embellished as always. But I know my soul is afire and perhaps I have ignited a fire in yours as well to follow your dream.
Peace
