LS'TARTED learning how
to play the piano recently.
This is hardly an earth-
Shaking development, Call
it a micro-event, Hardly
worth a colunm, really.
Except that, for me, it has
become something of a rev-
elation.

And therein may lie some tes-
son for the gentle reader.

Why would a fellow of my
years take up the piano’ This is
something that you have to start
young if you hope to make any
kind of a splash.

Of course, Pm not aiming at
making a splash. T just want to
make some music. Also, perhaps
more importantly, 1 wanted to lib-
erate myself from slavery to the
word processor.

It turns out that siting down at
the piano keyboard, setting sounds
in motion, is alot more fun than
sitting down at the keyboard of
tie writing machine, setting words
in motion acryss the monitor
sereen, i

Al the end of the day, if you've
been playing the piano, you have
“nothing,” to show for your
efforts,;compured with the sheaf
of pages you may have if you've
beer laboring at the word proces-
sor
Yet, in the end, the words on

/Paper amount to nothing too. It
/ Just takes longer for them to
crumble into ash, or fade from the
disc, or people's memories,

I think Lam coming to terms
with the nothingness that I have
always resisted. Maybe there's a
little bit of zen in all this.

After all, writers only kid
themselves that their words are
immortal. It is entirely possible
that a lot of writing is really an
attempt to deny one’s own mortal-
ity. Whereas, playing the piano is
a very here and now thing.

When your fingers lift from the
keys, except for a chord lingering
briefly in the air, that’s it. Period.
The thing is done and over.

This isn’t my first effort at
learning the piano. My mother
made me learn when | was a kid,

‘Starting at around age five or six. I
hated it.

My mother was a terrific
pianist. She ought to have been a
concert pianist —- at least, that's
- what she dreamed of being — but
the Depression and the Second
World War and a bad marriage
(and children) got in the way.

Still, all through the war years,

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my brother and | got to fisten to

“our mother playing everything

from Lili Marlene, On The Good
Ship Lollipop, Sleepy time Gal,

The One Rose and The 12th Street

Rag! © Paterewski's Menuet a
L'Antique, with Strauss,
Tschaikovsky, Beethoven, Chopin,
Mendelssohn and Rachmaninov
thrown in according (0 her mood,
You'd think some of this would
have rubbed off, but the truth was,
when she tried to teach her sons
to play, we rebelled, dragged our
heels and dreamed up every
excuse we could te avoid being
chained to the piano for even a

few minutes,

In 1950, when [was nine. a
food came along in Winnipeg that
forced us to abandon our home,
leaving the piano behind to be
ruined by the muddy river water,
which rose nearly to the top of the
instrument, and stayed lor weeks,
leaving nothing but a skin-shriv-
elled. wreeked hulk, its keyboard
Sike smashed teeth.

Our mother was devastated, but
my brother and | secretly cheered,
No more piano lessons! ‘Great!

We could run wild outside,
which was what we wanted to do.

We were poor enough that a
new piano was the last thing on
the Jist of things to restore, and
my father can away shortly afler-
wards, leaving my mother to sup-
port us,

Paying for food, clothes and
the mortgage became the priority.
ttis slightly strange now, all
these years later, to find myself

sitting down to a piano, fingers
groping for the chords, actually
paying to take piano lessons, and
loving every minute of il.

My mother passed away sev-
eral years ago. My brother even-
tually got around to sending me
her boxfut of music sheets,
which J took at, dumfounded by

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their complexity.

Ido not expectever to be able
toaster a fraction of the range
of material that came natantily to
my mother.

Well, not naturally.

She did. indved. study from
childhood onward, whereas bam
starting again atage 53, after a
mere three or four years of
instruction as a kid.

Sdll, the thrill... Pam nothing.
Jama mote. A poor, pathetic mid-
Ule-aged guy trying to learn some-
thing new in the enveloping dark-
ness while the biosphere collapses
around us,

Of course, | should be at my
word processor, banging out angry
hard copy about the stite of
affairs in the world.

Of course, | should be trying to
target my furious prose on the
bumbling politicians of the day,
the corporate criminals, the full

catastrophe. us Zorba called 1.

Instead. P find myself savoring
the few minutes a day | get to sit
atthe piano and haltingly pick Gul
afew melodies, a few chords,
actually getting the deft hand todo
something different from what the
right hind is doing.

What comes out is nothing new
under the sun atall, What comes
aut has no possible impact on
anything going on out there at all,
whereas there is at feast an ilu-
sion that your words could
(maybe, maybe) have some vague
effect.

But, ob my goodness, how
wonderful it feets to have actual
music rise up under your fingers
and fill the air.

And the best part is, you don’t
need un audience.

An audience, in a way, is an
interference. It is the music itself
that counts.

And then it's gone, And some-
thing much more perfect thansany-
thing you can write, although total-
ly temporary, has passed through
the fabric of the universe. Ah...

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