One Thing Coronavirus Taught Me About Myself
For most of my adult life, I’ve been a composer who was afraid to play the piano in front of anyone. I can trace this mostly to my lack of discipline as a child who, confronted with the choice between practicing my Mozart and just making up my own improvised pieces, always ended up choosing the latter. I’m forever grateful to my first piano teacher, Ruth Steinkraus Cohen, who upon discovering my lack of discipline did not react with anger but instead asked if I might like to learn “how to write down some of those pieces.”
Still, my lack of piano technique has meant that I’ve been extraordinarily shy about playing for others, especially strangers.
So how could it have come to pass that just the other day after logging into an online gathering of the group, POPS the Club, I found myself saying “sure” to my friend Amy’s request that I get the meeting started by playing something on the piano for the 20 students and teachers gathered via Zoom?
I trace this strange and unexpected personal shift to life in the era of social distancing. (or soshedist, as I’m fond of calling it)
Sheltering in place in my 1BR apartment, I could no longer pretend I was alone, not with my gorgeous and beloved (and scratched and beaten) Steinway grand looking at me longingly from its position of significance in my living room. After all, we’d been together for thirty years (!) ever since my late first beloved piano teacher Ruth had called me on the phone to tell me she’d just been to an estate sale and spotted a wonderful piano that was the only thing left unsold. It was an old beat up Steinway grand with a cracked soundboard, something considered a fatal flaw by most because it ordinarily meant the piano would have to be completely rebuilt to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. But Ruth had played the piano herself and informed me that despite the cracked soundboard, the beautiful sound was as-yet unaffected.
Sheltering in place in my 1BR apartment, I could no longer pretend I was alone, not with my gorgeous and beloved (and scratched and beaten) Steinway grand looking at me longingly from its position of significance in my living room.
The piano was in upstate Connecticut. I was living in a fifth floor walk-up in Boston. Yes, I could have the piano for $500, but I’d be responsible for moving it from CT to Boston. Naturally, I got on the phone and called the geniuses at Deathwish Piano movers. In a matter of days, my new piano was being hoisted up by a crane on a side street off Columbus Avenue, swinging gently away and toward the brick facade until suddenly, without warning, the two huge guys who’d positioned themselves on my open window sill lunged forward to grab it and yank it swiftly and gently inside to its new home.
The piano has served me well, allowing me to rehearse so many pieces in, first my home in Boston and now my home in NYC. Ironically, when I first moved to the city, the piano spent a year or so with my friend Jeanine in Newton while I slept on the floor of a friend’s dining room in Washington Heights, just a few feet from their grand piano!
It was not long after the start of sheltering in place that I found myself drawn more and more to the piano. And soon I was emailing a group of friends with short simple piano pieces I’ve started writing. They’re simple enough for all-thumbs me to play. And that — making and having stuff to play and enjoy — has brought me back to my beloved piano in a wonderful new way and I am so grateful. The time alone has at least yielded this one happy unexpected result.
Here for your listening pleasure (I hope) is one of these short pieces.
Originally published at https://www.extracriticum.com.
