A new year is on the horizon. Another journey around the sun, another year like any other...except HOLY CRAP NOPE. THIS ONE WAS DIFFERENT!
2020 has brought a whole new level of trial by fire to my life, and obviously, I'm not alone there, It's just clearly worth noting.
This time of pandemic isolation for me and my family has yielded some very needed deep introspection. I started to really sort out what I wanted, who I want to be for this 4th decade of my life, and I decided to see my quarantine as "bonus time" in a sense. Time for me to really dig deep into myself and clarify...tie up loose ends in there. I had to quite my job, the first one I had since 2009, and I was back home, with three children, remote learning and doing all that full-time-SAHM stuff again after a short eight months of being in the out-of-home work force. Everything stopped. The chorus I had been singing with for four years had to cease gathering, and online coordination wasn't something we were equipped for, so my main creative outlet for the past few years was now, gone.
Music is a huge part of who I am.
I have studied it for most of my life in some capacity. From actually paying attention in elementary school music class with Ms. Hoskins, to joining the school chorus in third grade, to taking violin lessons in school, starting drama/musical theatre classes, and later piano and developing the typical mild obsession with Mozart that EVERY young person has at age 10 after watching Amadeus (what?) then studying voice professionally, studying Music Therapy for two years, culminating in a degree in Theatre Arts.
All of those things are part of the story of who I am, but THIS story is about the piano.
My first meeting with a piano was...I don't know because there was always one there. The house I was born into came with one. An old, broken, beautiful, never tuned, goth-looking, mess of a piano, in the basement.
It didn't always look like that. It had a black top and panel that covered the innards, but this was taken just before my mother sold the house and had to demo the old piano. I now have an octave of the keys here with me for display.
In our hay-day, I would go down there and bang and play and make up songs. After seeing the movie BIG, I taught myself "Heart And Soul". But even before that, there was an event that burned itself into my formative years' brain. In going back into myself, working out the shadows and whatnot, I found a little girl who sat face to face with envy for the first time.
It was the 1980's.
I was watching TV...no memory of what I was watching, but there was a commercial.
THIS commercial.
For McDonald's.
I was SO mad at this little girl.
There she was, in her frilly dress, having been given the luxury of piano lessons, something I suddenly NEEDED more than anything in the world but knew we couldn't afford at the time, and she got to have a RECITAL, and spent the whole time complaining and NOT enjoying the music???!!! <scoff>
I remember venting to my mother about this. She tried to explain how stage fright was a thing, but I would have none of it. I decided that I was going to learn that piece of music and ENJOY it, and never be an ungrateful brat about it. EVER.
Well, I did get to take piano lessons, with Mrs. Angie Cinelli, from 6th-8th grade. I did learn Fur Elise, by Beethoven, and I even got to butcher it perform it at my Uncle's wedding when I was 14 on my Aunt's request! (I started in the wrong key, and had to attempt to transpose it on the spot because it didn't feel like an option at the time to restart as my lovely soon-to-be aunt was walking down the aisle to what turned out to sound more like the "Adam's family" version of the piece...but I digress...)
I had a few more teachers and a lot more Beethoven and Mozart. I would play on the piano in the high school auditorium when nobody was there. I would play on the "do not touch" piano at the big mall my friends and I would frequent on weekends: a grunge looking me in a Tori Amos t-shirt over-layed with a flannel and Converse sneakers would approach the giant baby grand in the East corridor of Roosevelt Field mall and bang out Rondo Alla Turk, then walk away. That was more or less the extent of my "risky" teenage behavior if you don't count singing show-tunes loudly with friends in playgrounds after dark.
At some point when I graduated college and had moved in with my boyfriend...I no longer even had a piano to play. After a few years of marriage and children, I found that I would sit down and play any time I was near a piano, but I couldn't practice or really play the way one should to hone a skill. So a few years ago, I declared that all I wanted for Christmas was a piano. I priced electric ones, and we made that a priority...because I realized that my children were growing up with less music, less opportunity for music than was acceptable in my opinion. Having an old dilapidated piano in the basement growing up was how it really started for me, and they didn't even have that. They didn't even know that mommy played the piano. My in-laws didn't know that I played the piano. But, to be fair, it has generally been a more solitary thing. My, more private practice. I sing with friends and whatever, whenever, I've performed in a chorus and in a few plays in the past few years...but I'm not skilled on the piano in the same, way. I don't have quick sight reading skills. I'm more like a very limited mediocre concert pianist who only knows a few pieces, but once I learn it, it's more or less "in there", so it's fun for me, and occasionally impresses my kids. Mostly, it's just therapeutic.
Then, this PANDEMIC hits the world, and suddenly, I'm home. A lot. BUT, I have a piano. So, I started practicing. I practiced multiple days a week. I practiced for an hour at a time. I WILLINGLY PRACTICED SCALES! I mused that my old teachers would finally have the answer to what was undoubtedly a question that ran through their heads at some point: "What's it going to take for this girl to practice every day???"...apparently, a season-long global pandemic quarantine!
The reason I'm logging all this now is that I challenged myself to start SHARING my music again. I love being on stage, but I never really liked performing piano in front of people...but I also hate being on video...so, I realized that I've become kind of a shitty "performing artist" if I can't bring myself to freeking PERFORM.
SO, my challenge is to start here, with the performing art I like to do LEAST in front of people, because I'm not even really "IN FRONT" of anyone. I'm recording and posting. Slightly less scary. This is part of my homework to myself, really. Breaking another barrier to my "best life" yadda yadda...but I DO hope whoever has read this far isn't horribly disappointed by this next part, now that I've built it up with all this backstory. I'm also dedicating this to my mother, who found a way for us to pay that $10 a lesson, and eventually convinced my Nonna to gift me a rented piano that actually worked so I could really play, because those broken keys on the old basement piano would leave me sore. You've been asking for a recording of this for about 27 years mom! Sorry I'm late, but technology finally left me with no more excuses. Oh...and special thanks to McDonalds. If you hadn't made that infuriating commercial all those years ago, I may not have known what I wanted to conquer at such a young age. I learned the piece when I was about 14, but it is still teaching me things at age 41.
Presenting: my amateur performance of one of the most famous piano solos ever written... <no pressure>
Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, commonly known as "Fur Elise", by Ludwig van Beethoven
