Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Memory Lane I: Piano Lessons

The first lessons commences: the fairy child, the elf girl, her slender frame draped with tiered skirt and soft sweater. Her gentle form sways quietly with the music. She feels the beauty. Her eyes dance silent and deep with glory. Technicalities and university jargon seep in through her heavy lashes; she absorbs what she cannot understand to create music deeper than her experience.

Glancing back at us who watch, she smiles; her soul transparently seen in her face. She searches, wanders, and loses herself in the music.

The second lesson: the girl-woman, prim and dreamy, chipper and capable. Debussy and Katchaturian murmur from her fingers, complex and precise. Challenged to perfection, she drills and clasps the difficult two-against-three passage. Teacher works to build bridges of concepts, and she dances her way over them.

Innocence and intelligence, she too looks back at us who observe, and smiles beauty and pleasure.

Third lesson: the youngest girl, the one with music coursing through her veins. She sits, barely, and pounces gracefully on her beloved keyboard: it’s all instinct and grandeur now! Intuition guides her seamlessly, while instruction directs her to thoughtful progress. He pulls her higher, and she rises on the tide. She, this child of the sea, learns to navigate the water.

She can’t help herself: the delight is so ticklish, that she giggles often. Rough places quiet under directed drilling. And favourite passages gleam under vigorous polish. She sees through the notes, and hears the music, feeling her way along the keyboard passage, till her soul-flood can be released.

These three, they all see and hear and express so differently. But they are captured by the same beauty, and it defines their labour.

And I, the one who looks on, remember the years of practice, the expectation of desire accomplished, the peering ahead, looking for beauty, searching for consummation. And in the meantime, beauty captures me.

Isn’t this the way of grace?

Before I can define its glory, I am captured by it. And it circles back again and again like a sweet chorus: you found me because I am here to find. You found me because I showed you the way.

So we echo the song back. And it is glory.

1 comment:

Peaceful Psalter said...

Sniff, sniff. I miss those three and teaching Haddie. Three little treasures, they are!

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