Day 15 : Reflexion

Day 15 : Reflexion

6:45 am.

I’m staring at the microwave as it reheats the second half of my coffee, trying to remember how I got into it.  It’’s difficult at first.   I am pretty sure I rememberI the middle of the story - but how’d I get into it?  Then it hits me: Oh, yeah: shame.

Practice began.

I remember that it was about 6am & walking into the studio, after feeding the cat, the word that came first to my mind was: limitation.  Is the choice to practice on the Casio or the Vose just a way of choosing how today’s experience will be limited?  Aren’t both these surfaces sort of unlimited in their own ways?  How is it that the answer to both questions can be yes?

Oh, brother.

I remembered to breathe.  I’ve been doing this for years & I still have to remember to breathe.  That’s why it’s called a practice.  

I chose the Vose because its main limitation was time.  I sat behind it.  Out of vestigial habit, I aligned the bench with the carpet.  No - remember the narrative.  I pulled the bench all the way back feeling for the rough edges of unfinished brick on the backside of each hand, eyes already closed.  Finger width, remember?

I have been trying not to wear headphones while walking Ophelia, but yesterday I did.  I wanted to listen to a bit of the Alan Partridge podcast.  I was looking for something very funny to send to my childhood friend Vladimir.  Vlad doesn’t live here anymore, but we still talk on the phone occasionally - more lately than usual.  I suspect he is going through a particularly rough time.  I hope he still likes a bit of Partridge.  5 minutes into solo walk/listening, its hilarity approved, I forwarded the clip to Vlad.  In this episode, Alan decides he wants to be an author & starts writing novels.  Its hysterical.

When I got back home I reread some of the previous entries into this journal entries & was mortified at how bad my own writing was/is.  I’d edit it, but if I edited out all that is truly either self-indulgent or performative, I’d have only blank space.  Who (the fuck) would read this?  Why did I even write these?  What is this, latin??  exhalare?  INHALARE?!  It may as well be read by Alan Partridge himself.

Then I noticed, while I had been slipping into this shame spiral, my breath & hands were following the narrative.  They were already waiting at the beach, making modest waves at center, unconsciously cycling in the polarity established on Day 1 : Forward in Inhale.  Back on Exhale.  Wait I want to edit that.  This is really: OUT on the inhale.  IN on the EXHALE.  

I think about the exercises from the beginning of the journal, & i’m relived by the fact that I can remember them all almost by title.  I can remember major turning points, the emergence of major exercises, frontiers I want to return to.  I can do this because of the established narrative, which may only come from having to write it down.

I comfortably set about stepping through the major movement exercise choreography established in the narrative.  Remember how to send the hands out on breath?  Remember how they come back together?  Remember heart-shaped box?  Remember why you called it that?  Remember itsy bitsy spider?  Remember why you called it that?   

Remember how a big wave sends the hands together forward up through the seaweed, up through the roof of Our House, into Bill Evans’ cave?

While I am thinking this, the hand waving has grown to a maximumized L shape: from all the way out to the farthest keys, then back to center, then turning out in the forward direction, through the black key sorting, over the chromatic line behind the fall board, over the fulcrum pins (my fingers report there are two per key arranged vertically), until the middle fingers report the rough unfinished key surface disappears under the hammer mechanism. 

I comodulate this wave with the breath cycle.  Centering (zeroing) its amplitude with the hands at the lip edge of center, where the thumbs can drop off or just lightly hold onto the side of the keys what the eight fingers enact our house.  Having gone through Wax Off, I now proceed to paint the house, tracing each white key from top to bottom.  Feeling the oceans.  The datelines.  Feeling Ti/Fa.  I switch polarity of one hand & continue to paint using the yin-yang.  I refine the performance of these exercises just a little before moving on.  

I spend some more time up in the cave.  My fingers push around the wall of mechanisms which form the back wall.  I realize that I am going to have to close up access to the cave prior to us moving next week.  Might have to do that later today in fact.  So I might as well learn as much as I can while I’m up here.  When I try to move my hands out to the sides of the cave, I’m stopped about half way by a heavy cast iron post on each side.  These posts coincide with the breakup of the key surface into its three continents.

I practice telling my hands to go directly to these posts a few times, & afterward encountering them feels much less accidental.

Remember who is at the edge of the continents?  Yes I do: Db & Bb.  Are you sure?

…Ok I just stopped typing to go check.  It is actually Los Angeles & Mesopotamia.  Don’t feel bad.  You didn’t forget the Ab.  Ab just isn’t part of the narrative.  

Bringing my hands back from each post my fingers immediately home themselves to these two black keys.  I realize my forearms are at 90 degrees with my shoulder line.  Like I’m carrying a tray.  I push the tray back & forth with the breath, like carefully handing off breakfast in bed.  

The fingers sort & unsort themselves along the black keys.  I ask if they can, even though they are separated, still make a heart shape box?  Each hand reports that it can.   With my eyes still closed, I feel a perfectly formed half-heart in the left: Mi.  Then in the right the mirror image comes back: there is Fa.  I think about Remi.

The separated hearts make me remember those necklaces we used to wear.  I practice moving between the broken heart & the heart shape at center.  I think of the trailer to the movie Sleepless in Seattle.  I think of a clever dirty joke that has already aged to the point where it’s not funny enough to repeat.  Yes some things are ego, & they tend to turn out to be ugly after all.  But some of it is narrative & needs to be written down.  No matter how bad it reads in hindsight.

Feeling my left Ring tracing the California ((California)) coast, one octave below center.  Feeling my right middle finger rise up at Mesopotamia, one octave above center.  I continue to breathe & wave.  Probably a good time to start making some tones.  I gently start softly alternating the two black keys:  lower LA, upper Mesopotamia.  The tones sound clear & rounded.  Their tonality sounds perfectly stable.  Most triumphant.  

The interval between these tones is two octaves plus a fifth.  The interval between them is the instrument’s tessitura: .  Below here are two more possibles shifts - 2 more groups of 2 - Bass & Low Color.   Above here are & two higher octaves-  2 more groups of 3.  

That’s three moves each direction from center to the extremes.  At Center (Our House) the forearms rotate at equivalent angles to meet at the exact Mi/Fa center.  Keeping the shoulders relaxed & not lifting the elbows, the two fore arms make an equilateral triangle with the shoulder line: rotating inward 30 degrees. The first move breaks the apex of the triangle, & each forearm rotates outward 30 degrees, becoming perpendicular to the shoulder line.  The second move can be achieved simply by rotating the forearms another 30 more degrees out - & not having to engage the upper arms to lift the elbow.  Then the final reach to each extreme is where the upper & under arms need to lift the elbow.   

I go back, not to the center but the first move out, where the for arms align with the keys.  I feel for the LA in the left & the Mesopotamia in the right & sound them again.  Two long slow beats per each breath phase counted out by the feet.  One tone per breath phase.  As the sound gets tossed back & fourth across an octave & a half, I audiate as I listen from low to high : SOL ….. DO…… SOL….. DO…… 

I think of me & Remi playing catch one day.   My feet are involved in the catch game as well.  2 : 1 with each hand.  Left food pumps two slow pulses when low Sol sounds,  Right foot pumps twice when High Do answers.  Back & forth.  The mechanisms produce very different effects (Una Corda, & Sustain) so I’m not pressing hard enough to engage either of them.  Just flexing my feet agains the surface, & sinking each pedal quite a bit realizing each must travel pretty far down before any mechanism starts working.

I pay particular attention to the Left.  Because it is still squeaking like crazy.  I realize the constant squeaking does not sound correlated with Db & Ab, & anyway needs to be dealt with. 

I open my eyes & see through the window in my periphery, Oreo entering the garden outside, dutifully following the curved path of uneven stepping stones, even though it would be easier for him to just cut diagonal across the grass.  I get up from the Vose & go get the WD-40.  I climb under the piano & push the una corda with my hand.  It’s clear that the squeaks are coming from very near the pedal itself.  Then I realize that WD isn’t needed.  The back end of the brass pedal lever pushes up on a brass rod that moved the mechanism above.  There is supposed to be a felt cushion between these two pieces of brass.  These felt buffers are missing from all the pedals.  The only reason the Sustain doesn’t squeak is because I wedged some paper in this same spot some time ago. 

I know that I have some brand new red piano felt in the tool kit.  But I don’t know where that is right now.   I look on my desk & see  pair of scissors & wearable set of wrist/ankle bells.  This item is from Nepal.  I have it because my friend Danny went there once.  I don’t know why he gave me these bells, but I consider them a rare treasure have always really valued having them.  I used to take them to the large street demonstrations back in 2017.  The sound of these bells can be heard shaking slowly each time the beat drops in the recording of the Juliana Simone song “Rock Me Back to Sleep”.  

Danny was my landlord once.  About 10 years ago now.  He & I are roughly the same age, he might be a little younger than me.  At the time he had just taken over his father’s insurance adjusting company.  There hadn’t been a hurricane in over 10 years so the business was struggling.  That’s why he had enough space in his offices to sublet one to me to use as my studio.  I

I met Danny as I went door to door in the (now long eradicated) low rent part of Coral Gables looking for a place to rent.  I rented space from Danny for 3 yeas without ever signing a lease.  Amy, his secretary, introduced us & Danny shook my hand immediately saying, “sure… but, you gotta give me guitar lessons!”  Which he took me up on often.  Danny played guitar a bit already by wanted to learn Gypsy Jazz.  He also gave me a heavy brass slide & a scarf he got from Japan that I used to use to play guitar blindfolded.   I found out during the course of our working friendship that Danny’s father had just recently passed.  Maybe that’s why Danny was so generous.  

The edges of the bell strap were fraying from use.  I figured Danny wouldn’t mind if I cut just a little piece off the edge to use for this purpose.  Using the scissors on my desk I cut off one edge of the soft frayed red rope.  Then I balled up the little threads & placed them in the cup of the Una Corda pedal lever, alleviating the grind of the two pieces of brass.  I then tested the pedal.  The squeaks were no more.

Practice ends.