day 18: music

first of all, completely unrelated to this post is the fact that you should never go to the grocery store at 10 p.m. because there are all sorts of "interesting" people hanging out in the parking lot, and second, you should never open the milk door at the supermarket tired. you just might almost hit yourself in the face, and flinch like an idiot, then look around to make sure no one saw.

okay. so now that i've got that all said and done. to today's post! i hope everyone had a wonderful friday! mine was quite long and i am happily home in my comfy snowman jammies now. that's right. i have snowman jammies. they are even fleece. i bet you're jealous. you should be. i am and i am the person wearing them.

anyhow, when i got home from work at ten fifteen, i really didn't want to go through the whole rigmarole of pulling the rebel out, thinking of a subject, booting up the computer, and sitting down to write an extremely boring blog post.

so i instead poured myself some nice sangria and stared for a while at the bulleted list i have pinned to my bulletin board (hey! maybe that's why they call it a bulletin board! random thoughts, by audrey). then i finally came up with the theme "music." easy enough. i love music so much. my computer houses about 7600 songs. and i used to play the piano. though before tonight i hadn't played since i was probably 19. i miss it, to tell you the truth. i started taking lessons when i was about eight, although my parents pulled me out after a few lessons, and i taught myself for about a year (i don't remember, who remembers at eight??) and then had lessons for a few years, until i would say, about 12 or 13. then i resumed the whole teach yourself thing.

so getting back to tonight. i thought that i would pull out the old sheet music and take a picture of my favorite song of all time (besides tuxedo junction, because that might be tied). fur elise. beethoven. he always amazed me. can you imagine, he was deaf and still composed these breathtaking songs? i can't. true talent. you don't find much of that these days, in my opinion.

i taught myself to play fur elise and practiced and practiced and practiced until my fingers ached to perfection. i had it down, and i could play some of the song from memory. i was proud of that.

then, when i was about 19, i stopped playing. life just....happened. and then, once in a while, i would sit down and attempt to hammer out a melody, though, by that time, the piano had become untuned and it was painful to play, because the notes from my memory were different and my fingers had developed musical dyslexia.

i haven't played in probably a year in a half. tonight i pulled the dusty book off the shelf, fully intending to prop it on the piano, shoot a picture, upload it, and go to sleep.

but then, i opened the book, and the familiar old, musty (not gross musty, familiar, comfortable musty. is there such a thing? i think so) smell wafted into my nostrils, and i was compelled to pull out the piano's bench, prop up the book, and begin playing.

i thought it would be a horrible disaster, that the notes would come out all wrong, and that i would give up after the first familiar chords.

but, no.

it didn't happen. i somehow made it through the whole song, just (well, not just, but similar) to old times. sure, the piano was out of tune, and my fingers stumbled a little to find the right positions on the fingerboard. but the music came.

tonight's picture is my favorite part of fur elise to play. well, i love the whole song. it is, you could say, hauntingly beautiful.