I’m a firm believer that it pays to acknowledge your weaknesses and remain humble and self deprecating. What I actually think of myself you’ll never know. You’ll find no evidence. But as a kid growing up in the burbs (and not just any old burb, Fairfield County, Connecticut) dozens of tranquilized housewives bragged about their kids for sport and my mother desperately wanted to get me in the game.
I couldn’t hit a baseball. Couldn’t shoot hoops. Tennis anyone? Zero hand/eye coordination. So she decided she’d outdo the others by signing me up for piano lessons. She’d produce a child protégé of the arts.
She chatted up her plan with her friends by the pool one day, each one armed with Chardonnay.
Tranquilized Housewife #1: Isn’t that a little effeminate?
Tranquilized Mother (mine): Liberace plays the piano and he’s a man. That’s nonsense.
Tranquilized Housewife #2: Well has he expressed any interest in learning to play the piano?
Tranquilized Housewife #3: Janet, you don’t even own a piano.
Tranquilized Mother (mine): Why do you people always focus on the flaws in a plan?
So I took piano lessons. I practiced chromatic scales and arpeggios. I practiced every single day. I caught onto many of the disapproval signs like my mother firing up the vacuum cleaner every time I started. Neighbors closing their windows. Canines losing their shit, in some cases on our lawn.
My teacher was Mr. Morrison. He was probably in his sixties and had a decent career until arthritis slowed things down. So I think he turned to the bottle. He wreaked of booze pouring out of his pores and had stanky breath. Now piano is pretty up close and personal. The shaping of the hands. Striking the keys correctly. I was inhaling not just his booziness but he also smoked. That one hour a week was torture. After the lesson, he’d give my parents an update. I’d eavesdrop from the staircase.
Be patient. Double his rehearsal time and let’s up the lessons to two per week.
I wanted to change my name and move. Even I couldn’t listen to myself. I could eventually press the right keys, but it took a while to position my fingers for the next chord. Like most professionals, I was not gliding across the keyboard as much as hiccuping through it.
Close to the holidays, my mother wanted me to learn Claire de Lune. Every kid learns it at some point, usually after Für Elise.
(Skip to the present I can’t stomach those songs nor Moon River, another starter piece.)
It’s Christmas Day and my mother announces that I’m about to entertain the guests.
I cautiously approached the bench. Some people clapped. Most weren’t even paying attention which was fine with me.
Ten seconds after the first measure many of the guests started heading back toward the bar to freshen their cocktails. Some just jiggled their ice cubes to drown me out. My grandfather demanded to know how much money my mother sacked into this dead end career move.
Lots of gee it’s getting late proclamations, though the sun hadn’t even set. Most of the menfolk headed to the basement to watch the football game. By the end of it there were three people left; my mother and her friend and me. Her face was buried in her hands.
You did great Janet.
All I wanted was to take an axe to that frigg’n Wurlitzer.