TGIF :):) (Instruments, Piano especially)

Good Afternoon, my Angel,

I hope you are having a nice day and looking forward to your weekend. This time it's TGIF for both of us. I do have to be at Pearl's tomorrow morning, and then to take the Kobedog to the groomer, but essentially I will be off until the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Right now I'm just doing dishes, puttering around, watching the JFK stuff. I have only very dim memories of the actual day. I would have been about 3 years 8 months. I remember my Mom was pregnant with my brother, who would be born two months later on January 14. I remember being across the street at a friend's house, just around the corner from where Pearl's house is. So I work right next to my childhood house every day. But I remember my Mom coming to get me that day.

What I really remember was my brother being born, and then The Beatles coming to America a few weeks after that............

Well, it's super windy outside, so I am just gonna stay in until it's time to head back to Pearl's. I wish you a wonderful afternoon and I send you all my love. xoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

(back in a while)

11:10pm : I am listening to the Schumann sonata and thinking of you. I think I've written before about the love affair between Robert Schumann and his wife Clara, also a composer, and it is a great story of devotion, and because it is, and because they were an Art Couple, I think of us when I think of them.

This is my time of night for concentrated music listening, meaning with no other distractions that happen in the daytime. I love piano music, as you know, and I like to read some of the comments in the Youtube videos, because I see how much the music touches people's hearts. So I know I am not alone in thinking it to be the instrument which expresses most completely the fine points of emotion.

I am always intrigued, when I stop to consider it, that an instrument (be it piano or any other) sits idle until a person begins to play it, and yet, when the playing begins, any possible feeling can come out, in every possible expression. It's interesting that no one really knows what music is, and yet at some point, someone invented these instruments through which someone could play.........

And.......play what? Formats developed - songs at first, most likely. Short forms. Then came the more complex forms. But the whole idea that music continued to develop, so that a desire to invent different kinds of instruments of expression was created, kind of blows my mind. Because no one knows what music is. With pictures, or words, we can say that an artist is trying to express, in one sense or another, what he sees or thinks. A painter interprets his impressions of the world he sees, or paints realistically. The abstract painter paints from within, and that is closer to what a musician does. The poet or writer in most cases is writing from areas of what interests him, or what he wishes to comment on. In the case of the writer and the painter, the influence is very often direct, overt.

But with the musician - the composer - and especially in the works of the piano, you listen to what is being expressed, and it's not visual, it's not literal (meaning words), and while it is aural, it isn't a form of directed communication, for want of a better term. It comes from, and goes to, places that we only know in the soul. It is true Soul Music, and must be listened to in the quiet of the day or night for fullest appreciation.

I am always trying to get outside the "taken for granted" side of life, so I can find the wondrous. Folks might hear a sonata, and go, "well, that was written by so-and-so, in such-and-such year, and it has been played by many great players, and.......". I like to listen and get away from all that. I'm not saying that others can't feel a piece of music very deeply, because that's why the music is so effective and soul-stirring.

In short, I am just absolutely fascinated by the idea of this instrument sitting there, silent, and then all this expression coming from it out of nowhere. And in the case of the piano, this phenomenon seems most extraordinary to me, because the music expands in such directions, all directions great and small. It is the instrument that can accept, to the fullest degree, the human spiritual expression that is input to it.

And then it expresses that input.

Amazing, if you ask me.

I Love You So Much, Elizabeth. I hope you had a nice evening. I will talk to you in the morn.

Sweet Dreams.   xoxoxoxoxo  :):)