pianos - (02/18/09)

i've known many pianos. there's my little upright at home, i've known and loved my whole life. it's taken me from hot cross buns to shostakovich's second piano concerto. from faber to bach. it's where my love for playing music started. it's seen me through many hard days. it was there for me when i couldn't even reach the pedals. it was there for me when the judges were horrible mean. its' a part of me. and that's just one piano. another one that sticks out in my memory is the piano in the peppers house in uganda. i only played it once. i should've played it more. it's nice to have that constant all around the world. music. lyrics change with language, but melody is constant. i played the same tune on a piano in south africa and uganda and israel and houston. it's constant. i imagine that's why everyone's attracted to music. everyone understands it. i remember all my friends pianos and the songs that have been played on them. some pianos don't like to be played boldly in large groups. but who does? they've heard some bad stuff. i'm sure they've also heard some amazing compositions though. some badly out of tune pianos. they play the classic sing along's quite well. songs that are sung out of tune anyways, so it doesn't matter that they keys aren't in tune. some hear crazy contemporary pieces that sound impressive. i don't know what they are, but they have one too many dissonant notes for me. the pianos that are learned on with blue tape peeling off on the central two octaves, the keys a little sticky. there's the many pianos from gold cup. they've been touched by countless kids anxiously shaking fingers. and there's all the pianos at the church, the slightly out of tune grand in the sanctuary, the sticky e in the kids choir room. the almost always locked nice-but-slowly-going-out-of-tune one in 212. the sticky eb in the choir room. the once-gross piano played for many a christmas recital in the great room. the out of tune upright on the 3rd floor. oh and i remember seeing billy joel's piano at forshey with mr. marsh. impressive. i've had so many good memories with these thousands of hammers and strings. i love pianos.

singer/songwriter - (02/02/09)

lately i've been on this girl singer/songwriter kick. i think as i've developed as a musician, i've grown to like stuff i relate to more. i can't really relate to the chick bands cause i don't really play with anyone. it's usually just me and my guitar or my piano. so i've grown to like band that are like that. gregory and the hawk, holly brook. and i like bands like that cause they're honest. and i know what they mean. when the girl in gregory and the hawk sings "i guess it doesn't matter what i am or pretend to be, cause it's her you'll always love and her i'll always envy...i swear i'm gonna cry, i'm sick of trying to be tough," i know what she means. she describes my feelings perfectly sometimes. "just leave me your stardust to remember you by." i like artists whose shoes i can walk in while they sing. yes, guy singers are amazing. i love to listen when they sing and play, but there's a different kind of connection when you really mean the words you sing. you don't have to interpret them for you. they're already translated into girl. broken-hearted girl. "cause no one listens when you wanna be heard." that's me. i mean, i love bands like dashboard confessional. buy they can only get so close to your heart when you can't directly sing them. you just have to imagine this invisible guy you don't know singing it to you. it's so different when you can sing the songs yourself and mean them. it's as close as i'm getting to writing my own songs for now.

Silence - (11/10/08)

ironically, i'm writing this with music in my ears. but i love silence. real silence. it's not just having headphones off. because most of the time with headphones off i'll hear the tv in the other room or a timer going off or the ice cream truck wining across the neighborhood or lines of poetry being muttered to perfection across the room or the phone ringing or the voices in my head screaming that i have too much else to be doing and that i can't just do one thing right now. silencing these voices and distractions can actually be accomplished with music. for me at least. nothing can distract me from exactly what i'm doing when i'm listening to music. but real silence. is there such thing as real silence? one of the most silent times i remember actually wasn't silent, it just wasn't noisy. on the top of the mountain in colorado at camp this summer. just sitting there alone. early in the morning. watching the sunrise. there's still the noise of the river flowing and the first chirping and the wind blowing through the trees, but it's not noisy. the beach is another silent place. you still hear the obnoxious call of the gulls., the crash of the waves on the sand, the trash blowing across the beach, but it's not noisy. early in the morning is another silent time. driving alone. you hear the roar of the engine, the honk of the distant horns of hurried people, the wind blowing against your car, but it's not noisy. or sitting in the back of someone elses car with the music turned up really loud. if you lay your head back and let the thundering bass sink you into the car, it zones out the rest of the sounds. and although it may be loud, it's not noisy. it's one of the most relaxing experiences. or playing the guitar when no one's around. or listening to some simple live acoustic guitar. so i arrive at the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, silence is not the absence of sound, it's the absence of noise.