all i needed to know.

A L L  I   N E E D E D   t o   K N O W   A B O U T   P L A Y I N G   t h e   P I A N O .

Like David Helfgott's father says to Sam Rosen in Shine ~

'No … music … teachers, Mr. Rosen.'

So then to impart everything I may have ever needed to know in fact about playing the piano that I just recently came to realize I have learned from watching the film Shine fifteen years ago or something and now a twenty-minute TED Talk the other week ...



> Boldness of attack!

> You must tame the piano or it'll get away from you; it's a monster - tame it ... or it'll swallow you whole!

> Liszt broke plenty of strings.

> The notes first; the interpretation comes on top of them.

> It's all a question of balance.

> Learn to play blindfolded.

> Your hands must form the unbreakable habit of playing the notes so that you can forget all about them, and let them come from here … the heart!

> You must play … as if there is no tomorrow.

> Play only one impulse for the entire phrase; stop thinking about every single note and start thinking about the long line from the beginning to the end.



Now ... now it is time to put that education into good practice.

national novel writing month.

So November is National Novel Writing Month (uhh ... NaNoWriMo). Jeff mentioned it on our trip to the desert at the beginning of last month and I was trying to encourage him to pick up his pen (or tablet or laptop or whichever device he finds handy for the purpose) ... and write. Maybe not a novel. That seems a little ambitious to complete in thirty days. But - say - a novella. Or short story. Something.

And sitting on my porch yesterday half reading slash half thinking all the while watching the leaves fall away blow off the trees in the front yard I realized I was already missing mountains. And so I was thinking of past trips into such mountains just sort of reminiscing and I realized when I've written about them - all but twice - it has always been about a specific certain trip. Never just about the mountains in general. Or wild places in general. Or my thoughts on such. Maybe I generalized in a sentence or two. But the point being the intention was always really quite specific. We climbed this. Did that. And such.

The one - first time - was about having blisters and not showing it or complaining or hobbling too much because we were in the mountains and the blisters would heal.

The second was more recently about an annual trip with J into the Sierras this past summer where maybe it was about the specific place but I think in reading back over it was less so and more about the struggle of the journey. Less about the place. Hopefully. Maybe.

But regardless that is the writing I tend to like the most. Less about the place. More about thoughts and descriptions. Everything else. Not that I'm any good at it.

But in thinking just now about how I miss mountains and it is only the (ugh) fourth of November I thought rather than just scrounging through photos of past trips stored on hard drives (which I wholly still intend to do if for no other reason than to bring back the memories and - well - plausibly give me something to write about) I could stave off the feeling of missing them by - well - writing about them.

So I'm not sure what I'll complete by the end of the month. But that's not the point as I told Jeff. It doesn't have to be a novel. It just has to be complete. Whatever it is. I (and maybe he now) must complete some form of writing by the end of November. I don't think I mentioned to him at the time anything about publishing but I think it should have to be published. So I'm throwing that in. On paper. Not on this blog. Or his. Give it some sort of completeness that we could hold in our hand.

I have no idea if he will actually accept the challenge. But off I go ... I think mine will begin ~

'It started two weeks ago ... '