left all my pianos out in the rain
Sunday 25 July 2004 | I like a cookie
O how I want my bedtime story story story, tell me stories. The thinly sublimated passage in Peter Pan where Wendy says with desperate seductiveness, Oh Peter, I know such a lot of stories.
There are some girls who’ll do anything to hang with lost boys. Stories and boys always get me in trouble.
Musical keys, I’m frightened of doing the same things again, attempting to turn the sock of my brain inside out and pick off those little pieces of grass and stick, get those tiny flattened lint bits out of there, not write the same prose poem over and over, because my body’s suddenly really frustrated with my brain and wants to move–wants to go running, which I can’t because I’m bleeding, wants to go dancing, wants to climb terrifying sheer faces, wants to do all those other kinesthetic things it enjoys and that my brain doesn’t let it do nearly enough, according to it, and because I’ve been thinking about the musical-keys thing for years, literally years, can I possibly explain this, why I both want it and back away from it, it’s synaesthesia surfacing again, here, listen.
Musical keys are colors. They are also sounds yes but are moreover shapes and flavors and motions, and I can’t bear to deface something I love so well, any more than I would try to write organized around the spectrum, when I use a word like—tangerine and cerulean and rose madder—to me those are, oh don’t laugh at me, they’re sacred. Color words are sacred and must be used sparingly. Who am I to write about/around/next to/within/beside F#min? that’s the sacred territory of Bach and Chopin, those are their keys, just like moss green and slate blue and brick red belong to Cezanne, his treetops and clouds and rooftiles, these things aren’t mine, and I can’t yet bring myself to destroy them with my limitations, you can’t approach Mount Sinai with MFA parlor tricks.
Quand même, people should know about C#min, its brilliant turquoise with cream and green notes. C#maj the same but has black and magenta, a little riper and less pointy or spangled, a little fuller. Oh I know them all, all those girls. One of the cruel weird heartbreaks of my life has been waiting to be alone, to be by myself so I could drag my bones to the piano bench and talk to myself there for hours, however tired, talk to Her there too, the White Creator. The piano is one of her daughters. I’ve been playing my godmother’s 1921 Steinway grand since I was thirteen years old, worth about forty thousand, maybe fifty and it will go to her oldest daughter, soon I suppose, because I’m the dark-haired daughter, and what would I do with a grand piano anyway. But it’ll always be more mine than anyone blonder’s, because I’ve played it for over twenty years, in every state of mind, in every kind of mental weather.
Here’s how you do this, get to know these colored girls: you pour a glassful of white wine and put icecubes in, because it’s hot. You don’t turn on the air conditioner. You open all the doors and windows, to the screen but not to the night because stick bugs and June bugs and moths will come in if you do. You strip to your underwear and plaster yourself to the dark wood of the bench, which is hard and uncomfortable and sticky. And you feel your way among these keys like you’re looking for seashells among kelp and sand and pebbles, like your fingers are combing moss and fern for a few tiny ripe strawberries, oh look here’s a bottle cap, here’s an old shotgun shell, well hey, that’s cool too, just feeling around in there for different little things, nothing big. Then after a while when you know what’s to hand, what’s lying around the vicinity, you can start asking questions, as one did of the oracles long ago. But you sneak up on the big questions, you have to make some conversation first, you have to warm her up, she can be skittish sometimes. You use the words you’ve just learned. So hey, what do you want to do tonight? I don’t know, what do you want to do? Well, you know it’s pretty hot. Yes it is. Wanna go for a walk? Um, okay, that sounds fine by me. Then you take her to Savannah. Then you go to the Carribbean, Uruguay, Minsk and Cote d’Ivoire. She may protest or rage at you, she may burst into tears after coming, she may frolic and kick her up skinny legs in the surf and squeal with delight. Everywhere you go you learn something. After a few hours of this you might look up and it might be two or three in the morning, and your wrists hurt and your voice is scratchy and you have this line on the backs of your thighs, from pressing against the piano bench.
And I can’t do that tonight (left all my pianos out in the rain) and I can’t call a boy and beg for my bedtime story, so I’m doing this instead.
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