Monday, July 26, 2010

This Guy Plays Beethoven on the Piano?

Yours truly, 1979, age 21, almost 22

C O L L E C T I O N — The photo I selected for my college senior yearbook. My parents would have preferred a smile with a blazer and a tie, but admitted in the end this was certainly more "me." It appears as if I'm casting a wary eye towards my future—as clairvoyant a moment as I've ever had! I graduated 31 years and two months ago—such a baby! I can still remember the night of the photoshoot like it was yesterday. Odd how some memories are embedded in my brain for life, and others are gone-with-the-wind so to speak. 

I was a music composition major, but have never done anything in that field. I've played piano since I was two years old, and could sight-read 12 staves at once at the 'height' of my studies. I was never able to memorize a darn thing, maybe 3 measures of this or 5 bars of that, but I could sit down with a new piece of music, one that I'd never seen before, and play it the first time well enough to perform if I had to. I also sang in the choir and in a professional Bach Cantata singing group in Poughkeepsie, the small city where Vassar was located. 

I've rarely thought about music since I graduated except to sit down at the piano once a year or so. I was in the piano room in my mother's house next to her bedroom playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata when she died—the result of a brain tumor, and by her own choice not to receive extraordinary treatment. I've always felt that she was carried away on the arms of Beethoven—not a bad way to leave this mortal coil, to use a term written by Shakespeare in Hamlet:

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ah there's the rub, 
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

My mother, 1939, age 21, almost 22

5 comments:

  1. You definitely nailed that 70's feathered hair look. LOL ! It's funny how similiar we both looked back then - right down to the mustache.

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  2. I LOVE WHO YOU ARE. TO BAD IT TAKES SOME A LIFETIME TO FIGURE IT OUT. I'M STILL TRYING TO GET CONTROL OF MY OWN LIFE.
    YOUR MOTHER WAS A BEAUTIFUL LADY.YOUR NOT BAD EITHER AT THIS YOUNG AGE. YOU HAVE SO MANY GIFTS.
    I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE ABLE TO PLAY THE PIANO. AT THE CHURCH SUPPERS DURING THE DAY, WHILE MY MOM AND THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH WERE COOKING IN THE CHURCH KITCHEN, I WOULD GO POUND ON THE HALL PIANO.JUST DREAMING WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO ACTUALLY PLAY A TUNE. THERE WAS NEVER EXTRA MONEY IN DADS' PAYCHECK FOR ANY KIND OF LESSONS. IF WE WANTED ANYTHING WE HAD TO WORK DOING JOBS FOR OTHER TO GET OUR TREATS. MOM AND DAD NEVER BOUGHT ANYTHING ON CREDIT . CORRECTION,MOM DID HAVE A DEPARTMENT STORE CREDIT CARD BUT IF SHE BOUGHT A GIRDLE OR WHATEVER SHE ALWAYS PAID IT OFF AT THE END OF THE MONTH. BUT CARS, FOOD AND HOUSEHOLD BILLS WERE PAID IN FULL. YOU NEVER BOUGHT ANYTHING UNLESS THERE WAS CASH IN HAND. GRAMPS AND I LIVE OUR LIVES THAT WAY TODAY ALSO.

    GRANNY

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  3. Hi Granny! I live like that too! I haven't had a credit card since 1988 I think. I always pay cash for stuff, even when I was buying cars etc. Probably why I don't have any left, lol. Of all the screw-ups in my life, at least I don't have a penny of credit-card debt, lol. It kills me to see people using credit cards for $5 of groceries, but I guess you do what you have to do.

    My mother taught me to read music in Germany when i was around 2 years old. Can you imagine the patience? Then I took piano lessons once we came home to the States, not that I liked them much back then.

    making coffee, then i'll be back online!

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  4. I can't believe how much you favor your Mother, of course this is based on never seeing your Father, lol. But in my mind I can turn your Mother's head to the left and imagine a very similar profile to yours.

    It's such fun when babies come along and families always see their side in the new arrivals. I wonder if animals behave in a similar manner?

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  5. I think I look like my Dad did too, I'll post a comparison one of these days. In one way though I didn't look like either one of them. My mother was 4'10" and my dad was 6'3". I'm 5'10" so I pretty much split the difference. I always hoped I'd be as tall as my dad but it wasn't to be!

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