Feb 2022 piano instrumental
I'll tell you a little secret about me.
I discovered my grandparents' piano when I was 3. I could play it reasonably well when I was 4. At the age of 5 I picked up tunes from the radio and reproduced them.
Almost everyone was delighted to have a veritable 'wunderkind' in the family... but my father was firmly against me pursuing a musical career. He actively prevented me from taking courses or auditioning at the academy of music. He made sure that no replacement for that old piano was bought when it finally broke down, and later he flat out refused to help me financially when I wanted to purchase my first synthesizer.
45 years later I am still struggling with the consequences of these educational measures or whatever it was. I still think about what would have happened if I had been encouraged from an early age. And even though things have gotten much better thanks to my work with the horses, it's still highly problematic for me to release music that only very few to no people are interested in (and I still find the concept of writing umpteen comments and participating in all kinds of online-what-have-yous to get someone to listen to stuff very difficult; so forgive me if i don't write as much as other FAWMers).
I know where it comes from, and that helps me dealing with it. But I really can't say that I am all too grateful.
I'd love to think that he only wanted to spare me a life of frustration… but I knew him good enough that I don't think that was the case. I'll never find out though.
After my mother had passed away in 2015 (two years after my father), I dedicated a whole album to her. But it never occurred to me to write a piece about my father.
Until an hour ago. This is the result.
It's hard to understand or to forgive but still I miss him.
@wylddandelyon Feb 2022
I hear the sadness in the music. But I also hear your gentle touch on the keys, and the beauty you pull out of them. I hope you'll keep playing, because I really enjoyed this.
@chroes Feb 2022
It's so heartbreaking what people can do to an artistic person. I have a slightly similar story to tell about how my then boyfriend prevented me from learning the guitar. A shame, really!
A wonderful song, I can definitely hear the broken heart ring out in the silence between the notes.
@howthenightcame Feb 2022
Sorry to bother you again, but here is the passage:
"THAT NIGHT he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wild-flowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised."
- Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
@timfatchen Feb 2022
I think I'd already downloaded this at about 25 seconds into it. I don't download many. This is very, very, very good indeed. Yes, a lot of us wonder and take years to get over the mis-direction (for want of a better word) of our growing up. I didnt' have your level of misery at all, but I was still directed away, although I was taught and trained up to a very high level. So I strongly empathise.
@howthenightcame Feb 2022
this is a beautiful piece and i REALLY appreciate how you use silence - there's an unobtrusive kind of confidence in that, that you can let empty time sit there and not be perturbed by it.
yep, the music market is massively saturated these days so it's very hard to find listeners. that's ok. write music for yourself, or to enrich an aspect of your life.
you work with horses? i just finished listening to cormac mccarthy's "all the pretty horses" audiobook. do you know it? there is a beautiful passage in there about dreaming of horses. i can find it for you if you like.
i bet you could write a great score for that scene...