A Different Keyboard
Dec. 26th, 2007 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rebeccmeisterI shall be AFK for a few days, while I travel to the southernmost depths of Eastern Washington with my family to visit family that I have not seen in two years. That aunt and uncle, favorites of mine, are living in a trailer while they build a cabin along the Snake River, so I do not expect to have internet access, nor do I expect that internet would be a good use of time there anyway. Hopefully there will be time for drawing and reading and writing, though if my time spent at at home so far is any indicator, I may be too distracted for such activities. Whatever we do will be good, I suspect.
I decided to bring along a bunch of piano books for this trip, and I'm glad I did, although ever since the felt hammers were replaced in my grandmother's piano it has been difficult to play songs involving anything remotely resembling speed (the piano tuner informed us that now the weakened springs are not strong enough to return the new hammers with rapidity, so only an expensive spring replacement would fix that problem and my parents are understandably reluctant to shell out several hundred more dollars when the only person who uses the piano is myself and I'm home but a few days each year).
People occasionally ask why I haven't bought a keyboard in Arizona, but even with good keyboards the aesthetic experience is not the same and I'm just not interested in acquiring another hunk of cheap plastic.
I often wonder about the futility of playing the piano--it's one of many things I probably could have been reasonably decent at if I dedicated more time and effort to it, but I do not. I play for my own psyche and am more or less content at present to play the same well-worn songs. It does make me question my devotion to it and other activities that will vanish without a trace when I die (there is a single poor tape recording of my feeble efforts that's not worth listening to). But it cannot be helped; I must play, and when I do, I wake up singing in my mind.
I decided to bring along a bunch of piano books for this trip, and I'm glad I did, although ever since the felt hammers were replaced in my grandmother's piano it has been difficult to play songs involving anything remotely resembling speed (the piano tuner informed us that now the weakened springs are not strong enough to return the new hammers with rapidity, so only an expensive spring replacement would fix that problem and my parents are understandably reluctant to shell out several hundred more dollars when the only person who uses the piano is myself and I'm home but a few days each year).
People occasionally ask why I haven't bought a keyboard in Arizona, but even with good keyboards the aesthetic experience is not the same and I'm just not interested in acquiring another hunk of cheap plastic.
I often wonder about the futility of playing the piano--it's one of many things I probably could have been reasonably decent at if I dedicated more time and effort to it, but I do not. I play for my own psyche and am more or less content at present to play the same well-worn songs. It does make me question my devotion to it and other activities that will vanish without a trace when I die (there is a single poor tape recording of my feeble efforts that's not worth listening to). But it cannot be helped; I must play, and when I do, I wake up singing in my mind.
