Saturday, March 31, 2007

Monsieur Debussy and the Sound of Moonlight



Philadelphia

I live for doing, for meeting goals, completing plans . Being? Well, that's another story.

Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no. Depends on how loud my get-it-done-it's-the-only-measure-of-your-worth( hooray, America, what a work ethic we instill in ourselves ).

In this time of healing, I've decided I'm going to will myself to be, not do. Perfect, don't you think? Will it and it will come, or something like that!

I've taken to playing the piano nearly every day for an hour. It's my compromise with my insatiable need to accomplish something during this time, and still practice just being. At first, I would just sit there, thumbing through my old music marked with teachers' reminders. "E flat" and a circle in the margin of a Rachmaninoff piece, and the word "SLOW" underlined. This sheet music is like an old friend.

I've played since I was five, my legs dangling from the walnut bench that mother had covered with a gold needlepoint cover detailed with a graceful violin pattern right in the middle.
As I got older, I was the accompanist at church, perched high up in the balcony straining to reach the foot petals with my the toe clips of my MaryJanes, watching the priest presiding over the liturgy in the mirror over my head. In my classroom, I would accompany the class hymn as part of morning prayer, play "God Bless America" when our afternoon class resumed.

I played solos, too, for Sister Mary Danette, a very stern woman, probably 40 years old at the time, whose black serge smelled like Ivory soap. Each week, she would come and fetch me from my classroom at Our Lady of Victory Academy
( I couldn't make that up, folks ). It was always the same: scales, a lesson in technique, then my assigned pieces: first simple, then a little Beethoven, simple Bach preludes, Mendolsohn, a little Chopin who I loved.

Finally, when I was in the eighth grade, that gawky year for girls when nothing fits, certainly not your body,Sister Danette announced that I was ready for Debussy. She pulled out Claude Debussy's piano solo, Claire de lune. I was both elated and intimidated. This wasn't a watered-down version of the piece, it was the real deal with sharps and flats to reckon with, different tempos. And on top of that, it was my father's favorite piece, one he knew very well. No fudging on timing, or missed notes would go unnoticed.

I practiced, and practiced, and practiced often alone after school. Finally, I'd mastered the piece just in time for my father's birthday. I wrapped the blue covered sheet music and tied it with a bow. I handed the package to him, my hand shaking with excitement, with the idea that I'd learned something just for him.

I played it for him in our living room after he had blown out the candles of his cake. A funny thing happens when you commit a piece of music to memory--it takes on a life of its own. No longer pre-occupied with finding or reading the notes, your fingers, your being takes over. And the piece of music creates its own magic. Sometimes, it can even be flawless, your ear knowing that every note, every intonation is just as the artist had intended.

That June day, the music transformed--Debussy's genius, my fingers. They all clapped. My father smiled, gave me a kiss. Then, he took out his fountain pen, and with black ink wrote "Mary Catherine" in large script across the blue cover page. "You own this piece", his loopy cursive said to me.

I've played Clair de Lune most every day, usually at the end of my playing after my fingers are loose and relaxed. The lovely melody uses all the piano's range, challenges me to remember the stretching required to reach more than an octave or roll the bass cleft two octaves without a break in the sound.

It's an old memory soothing me, suspending time as the notes move through the air, as the foot petal sqeaks a little as I press it. It's like I'm the vessel moving my hands but mostly listening. Not much effort, not much doing. And, like the solo's English translation suggests, it creates a feeling and mood of being bathed in a sound like moonlight.

It is, indeed, my window into simply being.

M.C.

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