ECHOES OF PIANOS IN THE WIND

Note: I hated my first version of this, so I DRASTICALLY edited it and decided to post it again.

 

Wind howling for the past two days and nights, with a soothing balm of timid warmth that hints at the eventual expulsion of icy winter.

Wind sifting through the naked branches of weary trees. In the feeble sunlight of day and the depthless darkness of night, I hear the distant echoes of long-ago pianos that resurrect a buried past I once knew. 

I'm suddenly ten-years-old again, sitting at the keyboard of a brand new Baldwin Acrosonic - an expensive instrument my parents could hardly afford but which mesmerized me with never-ending wonder and a wealth of eventual possibilities.

And my mother is there, blessed with an astounding resource of knowledge and armed with the infinite patience of saints. She was my first music teacher - I learned the rudiments of the keyboard from the music books she had as a child.

The Baldwin Acrosonic that my parents bought when I was ten. Over forty-five years later it still looked pristine. Now - in Tennessee squalor - it is completely destroyed and unplayable.

 

Only four years later, in a grand public auditorium in Southern California, I gave my first solo piano recital at age fourteen - playing works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Sibelius. People could hardly believe I had advanced so far in four years.
I was incredibly nervous - hardly able to keep my skinny leg from shaking on the piano pedal.

In time, I had the privilege of studying with the best piano teachers in Southern California. In  retrospect, I marvel at the fact that my musical progress was nearly effortless. I seldom practiced with any diligence - my virtuosity came naturally.

When I was twenty, I performed a piano concerto - the D minor Concerto by Anton Rubinstein -  at Cal State Fullerton.
In a short span of subsequent years I performed regularly with a chamber orchestra, accompanied instrumental and vocal soloists, and also performed as a solo pianist.
For a brief time I was a student piano teacher for Cypress College - but teaching definitely wasn't my forte. I despised every minute of it.

Eventually, my passion for music and my wildly reckless private life clashed violently - as I fervently burned proverbial candles at both ends.
My lifestyle became a frantic frenzy of intense promiscuity, lethal amounts of booze, and occasional drugs.

When I left California (in my early 30s) there was no turning back. My intensely destructive lifestyle was killing me and I yearned for escape.
I still played the piano almost daily, but my public musical life was waning. 

In the Missouri Ozarks I became involved in a romantic relationship that almost turned lethal. In the end there was extreme violence, we nearly killed each other......

In Texas I endured dismal times and incredible bad luck - - lost almost all of my money. It's a long, painful story.

So I wound up here in rural Tennessee, existing in the wilderness in abject poverty. I  marvel at how swiftly life can go downhill - - how incredibly quickly you can lose your health, wealth, and the will to live.

In recent years I've become extremely angry and bitter. I no longer care about anything. There's nothing left of the intriguing person I once was.  

Why don't I resume my music?
During the past seven years that I've lived here I sunk into a seriously deep depression, from which I have never emerged.

When I first came to Tennessee, the Texas movers lost (or stole?) an enormous amount of my possessions. Among these missing items were most of my musical manuscripts - and all of my mother's piano music....and my grandmother's piano music.
These things are completely irreplaceable.

My two once-beautiful pianos are now completely ruined.
I live in a flimsy, ice-cold house, where a perpetual dampness penetrates everything all year long.

Both pianos are ravaged with mold and mildew. The dampness has cracked the wood and destroyed the mechanisms of the keys. Hoards of insolent mice have nested in the pianos and completely ripped the insides apart.

Neither of the pianos are in working condition and there's no way they can be repaired. This is the sole reason why I haven't touched them since I moved here.

At one time music was my entire life, my  reason for existing.
This cursed place has taken it all away, leaving me devastated and disgusted.

Am I ranting?
I'm merely purging my frustration.

Could there possibly be a positive ending to my tale of woe?
There might be a note (no pun intended) of redemption.

 

When I lived in Texas I had an electric keyboard (nowadays they're usually called digital keyboards). Unfortunately it was one of many things that was "lost" when I moved.

For the past few months I've been considering getting a new electric/digital keyboard, since my pianos are no longer usable.

Last week I finally succumbed to my whim -  I ordered a new Casio keyboard online. It was delivered yesterday (Monday), in a torrential rainstorm.

 My new electric/digital keyboard

I have no intention of resuming my long-lost piano "career" - but the keyboard might inspire my errant fingers to get in motion again, and resurrect my withered soul with echoes of the music that used to be.