Melodies

It's late, Saturday night, and I've been playing music for hours and my hands aren't aching, despite painting at work all afternoon. Did someone shoot some cortisone in my knuckles when I wasn't looking?

It's really weird.
I like it.

There's a piano piece that my sister taught me in the 1970's that I like to play, but for years I haven't been able to summon up the bridge. I don't even know the name of it. But tonight it suddenly came back -- go figure. I started playing and there it was, unlodged from some previously-dormant part of the brain. I remembered it, played it through, was astonished. Who can account for lost melodies, suddenly called forth?

I played three of six Bach Variations. I played Moonlight Sonata, if even in the absence of moonlight on a rainy November night. I played and sang "Gravity" by Sara Bareilles.

Stacks of music heaved from the big wicker basket: Chopin, Mozart, Fats Waller, Strauss, Carole King. Single sheets of notes, out of order, rag-eared & ripped. Ghosts of pianos past. Notations written in pencil, some from the 1960's.

Buried in the basket was my melodica, unused for years because of a wonky key. I said fuck it and got my handy-dandy multi-tip screwdriver and took the damn thing apart, poked out the loose pieces, repositioned them, put the screws back in, et voilà: music. And of my own doing.


I worked out Cal Scott's The Lighthouse Keeper's Waltz, key of G.

Heaven.