Archive for July, 2009

I used to play the keyboard reasonably well.  Among the instruments that I’ve tried – from guitars to wood flutes to harmonicas to drum kits – it’s in piano where I first learned to read (and tried to write and compose) music.  I didn’t have a piano teacher, so I never really became a virtuoso with the instrument.  I think I’ve un-learned a lot of the things I know about piano and keyboard, in favor of lyrics translations and a few attempts at songwriting.

There’s something about learning music that can get so frustrating, and at the same time so rewarding.  When you play a piece or write a song, the end result is almost always in your head.  You want to sound like that melody or that voice in your memory, imagining that performance as you go along.  I almost always write my songs in a notebook with pencil marks, and wear out a few erasers along the way.

Keyboards are somewhat uncool, though.  There will always be that appeal that a guitarist or a bassist will have when they carry their guitars around, but you can’t lug a keyboard around, or wheel a piano about your destination every day.  Piano players are either for the frou-frou crowd, or for those interested in recitals on “Chopsticks” or “Canon in D.”  I played things by ear, so I struggled with notes.  Many kids play better piano than I do, so when I found a keyboard that I was very good with (one with 104 keys, not 88), I gave up on piano altogether.

I don’t remember who exactly said it, but there’s something lyrical or musical about a bunch of words put together.  When you recite a poem or an essay out loud, there’s music to be found in it.  The “hidden meanings” we’re after can be found in the way we associate metaphors and images, but there’s a different and almost transient meaning that there is in sound.  There are hidden bars and notes in a poem or in a story or in an essay, and can only be discovered when they’re read out loud.  I think it’s that “lyric” that gives a piece its character or personality.

Yet I digress.  Sometimes I wish I could sit in front of a piano again and play a few bars here and there, but I don’t think that’s possible when you forget everything about it with time.  I couldn’t play a canon or a symphony, or even a round, but maybe I can play something by ear.  Maybe.  Just maybe.  Something fiery, of sorts: not to the ear, but to the soul.

One day, you’ll understand.  One day, you’ll have kids of your own and understand why I did what I had to do.  The fatherly sermon translates almost immediately to Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker… I am your father.  Search your feelings, you know it to be true.  It is your destiny!  Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!

Rather than fall into a bottomless pit in the vast expanse of space, I found myself wearing the latest in fatherly fashion: collared polo shirts.

NOOOOOOO!!!

Dad disapproves of my “fashion sense,” because I come across as a grungy suicidal teenager in the throes of moral crisis.  “It’s too… you,” he says.  “You sometimes have to make compromises to succeed in life.  It all starts with presentation.  So cut your hair.”

I shook my head like a grungy suicidal dog making a choice between Kibble and its own poop.  “No.”

“Would you at least try… dressing up decently?”

“No.”  The response came from a guy who reported to his job interview in jeans, and can count the number of times he wore slacks in his adult life in one hand.  “What next, you expect me to wear creased jeans and carry my cellphone in a carrying case on my belt?”

“Well, yes.”

Shit, I said.  I can imagine myself 30 years from now with a combover, Lacoste polo shirts, Attitude slacks creased and folded at the bottom, and shiny leather shoes.  I’ll end up being the archetype of Every Dad on the Face of This Planet, raising my children to the taste of the Sunday Happy Meal.  Or getting that evil eye from my wife if she sees me ogling some lady at the mall.  Or reeking of the smell of Ben-Gay.  Or meeting a balding acquaintance, dressed in the same way as I am, and say, Oy, pare, kumusta na?  Long time no see, how’s the business going, partner?

My future just flashed before my eyes, and I don’t like it one bit.

“Dad, clothes don’t make the man,” I replied.  He looked at me with that particularly odd-bordering-on-disgusted look on his face.  Black shirt, faded jeans, boots, trench coat.  My hair was all right, if not for handfuls of shampoo and a pass with a plastic hairbrush.  That was “all right.”

“Would you just… get another jacket?”

I went back to my room and found my black fleece jacket.  “Okay, let’s go.”

“You look like an addict.”

“No I don’t, I’m just being me.”

“One day, Marck, you’ll understand the virtues of looking presentable.”

“No, he won’t,” my brother said, dressed in the same way Dad was.