lotof.

So Lotof called today.

'Hello Thom, this is Lotof at Michelle's Piano. I have some information about the time frame. There is a very strong possibility that we can have the truck in your area this week on Friday. Please call me so we can chat about it. If I'm not here, please ask for Ken. He's our moving manager and he can coordinate with you as well. Thanks, bye.'

That was quick.

-----

So we had gone to Portland this past weekend. Found ourselves on the southwest side of town donning sunglasses as we pushed open the doors of some outdoor shop where Katie found a 'Climbers Wanted' tee (and myself a windscreen for my new über-light Snow Peak Giga stove) and headed down Grand. Glanced off to the left when we reached Stark and there was Michelle's. Earlier in the morning we had walked up and back the sixth block of northwest Stark downtown stumped only finding a bank and some other business which was clearly not a Bechstein dealer.

They had moved since New Years Eve a few months ago and so here we were by accident. So we turned down Stark.

I peeled open the door and saw him sitting at his desk. He was on the phone so I wandered over to an old fellow nineteenth century black satin Blüthner set amongst a group of new polished Bechsteins. Played a few chords. A quick melody of some sort. Quickly he got up walked over and introduced himself as Lotof.

I introduced myself and how I had been at the old location on New Year's and given his card. He smiled and nodded. We talked about hammers and bass strings and felt and voicing and repetitive tunings and such carried on for a bit after all was said and done two or three months I'd be without my piano the hammers shipped off to the Berlin factory for replication and how they'd be contacting the head Bechstein technician from Texas for consultation on the restoration and so forth. A handshake. Keep me on the waiting list for a Seattle pickup I told him after he invited us back with a smile to a master class the visiting German pianist Alexandra Sostmann was giving that evening and we left heading back out into the sun of a surprisingly warm Portland afternoon to carry on.

---

Noticed the call on my phone this afternoon. And here I am and have been this evening ... debating.

Can I stand being without the Bechstein for a few months? I imagine how it will sound with new hammers and dampers and strings. I've been here before - imagining the sound, I mean. The tenor incredible already what would it be like? The felt a hundred and thirty-six years old. Worn. The action old and creaking under my fingers. Some keys sticking. What would it be like to play it all responsive and delicate? I can barely play pianissimo without fighting against the piano. Some notes won't play fortissimo when I bang on them.

But I sense it's there. I know it's there. Just waiting. But for what?

To be picked up by a gang of men to haul it out sans legs through my front door down the porch steps into their waiting truck off south to Portland to sit in a workshop torn apart while a factory - the same factory where it was likely built all those hundred-some years ago across oceans then carried on a horse-drawn carriage down cobble streets to an eager household to be given life - assembles a replica of the hammers for me to play? Then installed by competent hands and glued and voiced the worn patina given a loving polish to be wrapped up once again for a trip back north back up the stairs of my porch through the front door uncrated in my living room gently set down back on its legs lid propped open the guys standing back inviting me to sit down with a friendly gesture and play it and I ...

I hit a note ...

then a chord ... then a melody ...

Then I just start banging and the sound rebounds off the plaster walls and glass and the oak floors and back to me washing over and through me and I am totally at a loss ... or so I imagine.

'Sure Lotof - I can be around Friday - what's the delivery window?' I think I hear myself saying ...