Trip to Atlanta

            I had a wonderful visit with my siblings in Atlanta a few weeks ago. 

Laura, me, Sharon, Lee

We laughed a lot, as only we can do and only with each other. We watched a pastiche of Coogle family home movies, ourselves as babies and children, our parents so young and active and, as we acknowledged to each other, so playful with us when we were children. We had a pizza party with Laura's daughter and grandchildren on Laura's patio, where she has a wood-burning pizza oven that she loves to bake in. We drew names of Kentucky Derby horses from a hat for a dollar each, then watched the race, mint juleps in hand, with great excitement. We played croquet. We spent a night at Laura's lake house where we took walks and had lunch on the dock and I had a swim and my sister Sharon, who traveled in southeast Asia this winter, made us a great Asian dinner. The four of us enjoyed hours together working a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, which we exultantly completed. 

Lee isn't pictured because he's taking the picture.

            One evening while we were working the puzzle, my sister Laura left Sharon, Lee, and me to fit pieces together while she played the piano in the other room.

            She has been playing for years but has recently been taking lessons again. She can play very difficult pieces. I remember some Chopin that she played last year. She was very competent with the keys. She could crash-bang her way through those difficult pieces with alacrity. 

            This time was different. This time when she played, music poured forth. The listener didn't think, "How impressive she is!" but "What a beautiful piece of music." She was playing Mozart's Sonata Number 5 that evening, a piece I didn't know but which I found delightful. I loved its minor-key truthfulness, its refrain that sounded like, "Ha-ha, ha-ha." I thoroughly enjoyed listening. It was beautiful.

            Laura had found the essence of the music in the pieces she was playing. She said her teacher told her she had to learn to relax her hands, so she spent days of practice with her hands hovering over the keys, willing them to relax. And when they did, suddenly what she was playing was music. Somewhere between her fingers and the keys of the piano, she had found that essential quality. Instead of making music, her hands were following the music, as though it were somewhere invisible until her hands found it and made it visible, not molding it into shape like a sculptor but stroking and caressing an existent, constantly flowing sculpture.

            I want to play the guitar like that, but I can't find the music. Where is it? Is it in my hand, which my guitar teacher also told me to relax? Is it in the fingernails, that have to be just this long and no longer, just this shape, just this smoothness, and without all that there is no music? Is it in the notes on the page? Is it in the accent, the dynamics, the rhythm? Is it in the guitar itself? Is it in the stroke of the fingernails on the strings? Where is the music? I am still crash-banging my way through my pieces, and I do so want to find the music. My teacher can pick up my own guitar and play the same notes I play, and when he does, there is music, so I know music lurks in my guitar, waiting to be freed. I want to find it.

            So I take my guitar home, I file my nails, I set my music on my music stand, I tune the guitar, I will my hands to relax, I stroke the strings, and in my head I hear the music. Somewhere between my hands and the strings of the guitar there is music. I know it's there. Someday I will find it, and when I do, I will relax and sit back and listen as my hands follow the sculptured form of the music and bring it into the room.