I love music. I’ve played the piano since I was seven. The last time I tried to play, I discovered that I wasn’t able to read the bass clef on a sheet of music. Also, my left hand had lost its musical memory for the bass clef. I visualized playing the saxophone, which is treble clef, and my left hand remembered the notes.
I could not remember the most fundamental things: notes. Like almost everyone who learns to play the piano when they are young, your piano teacher encourages you to make up funny lines to remember the name of each key and letters on the clef. As I sat in front of my piano, my mind was blank. I longed for those phrases I tossed aside long ago. I opened the lid of my piano bench where I use to store trinkets, such as an an apple green spiral notebook with crazy white notes scattered on the cover, that contained my first six months of music theory. Then, I remembered that I had put what was left of my beginning piano music in a file drawer. Three rows of steel cabinets were downstairs in the basement. There was no way I would be able to navigate the stairs.
When I was a girl, my teacher use to give me plastic busts of composers each year. My favorite bust was given to me by my mother. It was as larger bust of a handsome young Chopin with blue eyes and cornflower blond hair. Once, when I was eight, I was having a difficult time playing a piece and I took the bust outside, placed in on the grass and danced around it. I was wearing a sunny yellow dress then, in Texas. But as I sat there at the piano that day, I pictured myself going outside in my house dress and dancing a jig with the crazy old Turkish woman who lived across the street. No inspiration there. No bass clef.
Now as I sit here typing, those childhood phrases are flooding my mind. Every Good Boy Does Fine Always, FACE Good Boys, Bad Girls Eat Candy All Fall, All Funny Black Geese Eat. My piano is in storage now. But, down the hall in a small room there sits my childhood piano, terribly out of tune, its legs gnawed from a crazy dog and sticky keys from a gaggle of young nieces trying to play Heart and Soul. Maybe it’s time two old friends got together. Maybe I can find my lost bass clef.
Right now I’m listening to Live365 radio on the internet. One of my favorite stations is Celtic Moon. If you are a fan of Loreena McKennitt‘s style of music, then you should tune into this station.
What I love about Live365 radio, is they provide so many small radio stations that play different types of music. My brother listens to it when he gets home from work. He is also a fan of Celtic music. But, his tastes have always been more eclectic. I will never forget the timeless melody of Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road which he played over and over again on his turntable. He is the only person I know that has the entire musical collection of Focus, a yodeling foreign rock band founded by a classically trained flautist.
It’s time for me to go to an on-line support group meeting, so goodbye for now.
I am dying 