piano

patient stars on a passion sea

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I am a sea for you, and all my
other realities, hang
longingly, waiting

an intensification of the waves, tender pink,
growing moody, faint mauve hues, rose absolue,
crimson interdit
almost red, almost dark, almost night, almost
dawn

roiling, I lurch another night
unknowing, other
to myself and to those who know me
daytime

a restless wakening, a dreamless
depth, a haunting utter knowing
beyond, beyond

the stars arrive,
intensification of light
patient, delighting
eternal, vanishing,
shine singing

vanquishing
the sea the sea, it wrestles
warm, hot, cool, chill within me,

I hope, I pray

Note: This poem was written in response to an abstract watercolour painted to a recording of myself playing Einaudi’s Divenire. I played this for the first time this morning having had no access to a piano for the previous three years. It was full of mistakes, hesitations and interruptions, but beautiful.

routine poetry

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I woke in my bed
voile curtains adrift
at the open window.
Perfect tea.
Absorbed in a magazine
that never disappoints.

I sat in the garden
to eat breakfast –
a courtyard really,
five metres by three,
maximum, all my
flowers are blooming.

I swept; faint scent
of rose petals,
of sweet peas,
which I picked.

I ran at the seaside.
It was easy on the way out,
due to the wind, but I didn’t realise
this at first and thought I
could run faster.

I wrote my journal with
tea in a thermal cup that
tasted – just – of washing up liquid.
I’d used too-old cherries
for the rock bun.

I bathed in the
bath that used to have an
uninterrupted view of sky,
until my neighbour
moved the television aerial.
I try to pretend it is a bird’s
perch.
It’s not often.

I dealt with email;
at the garden table, to
an old friend, after ten years
distance, at least.
His children are grown up.
Clouds sniffed past
cool breezes.

I ironed sheets and
pastel clothes that
wafted comfort,
listening to Chopin.

I wrote a poem.

let me count the ways…. I love coming home

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So my last business trip of the year is complete and after the four and a half hour commute, I have just turned my key in the lock and opened my front door to the joys of coming home.

And here they are:

A few moments of reshelving favourite books, boxing up adaptor plugs, sliding pairs of shoes into their familiar hidey holes, and walking in my mother’s homecoming footsteps of ‘getting the washing on  the go”.

The particular hum of household appliances, the faint squeal of lightbulbs turned down on the dimmer, the strike of a match put to the gas fire tiled with fragments of my great grandmothers china and pebbles from my favourite seaside, the familiar rhythms of the boiler.  A symphony.

Settling straight into the routines of my home neighbourhood – tomorrow is recycling collection, so it’s back to me to take it out (my kind neighbour does this when I’m away).

Conscientiously watering plants before they die of neglect.

Warming up cherished cold corners, scented candle on the hearth, hot-water bottles in the bed, scented oils in the bathroom, a spread of chords on the too-silent piano.

Friendly things to eat – favourite tea tonight and tomorrow the prospect of my beloved favourite breakfast.

The smell of laundry.

Everywhere treasure: favourite cards, tea lights, cushions, books, mugs, chair, pillows, cosy clothes.

Catching up with connection, responding, calling, delaying, writing.  Being available to my friends and family again after days of intense focus.

Pink (seemingly outlawed from any business hotel I’ve stayed at in the last several years).

Prettyness – in delicate colours, in intricate textures, in contrast, in details, in scent, in light.

Storing my suitcase and turning back into someone who lives in their house, and who does not drag their possessions with them everywhere like a maladapted snail.

‘Pottering’; a mundane but beloved verb that rarely occurs away from home.

Presence, to myself, to my life, to now.

And thankfulness; what riches.

on leaving some things unsaid

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I was going to carry on with part three (photo) and part four (name) of my one month review, and something has made me hesitate.  Is this too much reviewing?  I ask myself.  I feel a bit ‘I’ve started so I’ve finished’, but I don’t want to pay so much attention to something that I wear it out, like washing.

So in fact I will leave it there for reviewing for now.

Leaving some things unsaid is perhaps surprisingly like the dynamic of deciding when to jump off a wave you’re surfing.   Once you’re up, it’s so tempting to ride that wave all the way to the very end, to get the last centimetre of wave out of the experience.  But sometimes that leaves you on a scrappy bit of wave with no energy left in it, plus you’ve gone so far the paddle back can be really long.  Sometimes it’s better just to hop off earlier, leaving some energy and excitement ready for the next one.

In the writing I’ve been doing so far, knowing when to hop off what I’m writing has proven surprisingly challenging.  One of the most common final things before I post a post is to delete the last line.  (I’ll be heading over to ‘found poem, London, autumn 2014’ soon to get rid of ‘Go to it’, I can feel it’s too heavy-handed).  I have an aversion to overemphasising a point and making it annoying.  The other day I realised I wanted to coin a new word, something like obviaphobia, to label the fear I have of saying something that is too obvious, or that has been said too many times already, or getting wedged in an cliché.

(Leaving things unsaid is a habit I try to cultivate in friendships and work.  My sense of justice and precision is such that I often feel compelled to aim for accuracy in accounts of events, feelings, responsibility.  But this kind of precision can be too much to bear.  Discretion is an unsung hero of human relations.)

In music, I have been learning about ‘interrupted cadences’.  A cadence is two chords in a row.  The ones I have been learning about are at the end of a phrase of music.  A perfect cadence sounds like an ending.  And imperfect cadence sounds like you’ve just taken a breath but are about to end.  And then the interrupted cadence is my favourite.  It’s like leading someone up to the end of a path, and stopping just as the path turns a corner, and you can’t see what’s next.

The what’s next? is the unsaid bit, and I like the bit fact that leaving a bit unsaid leaves a space for the reader.

recovery

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So it’s getting near to the piano exam, and an important and underrated skill is coming to the fore:

Recovery.

It turns out that despite my own deep desire to avoid mistakes, this is not a realistic goal.  In fact, the more pressure that is put upon my performance to be exquisite, like the concert pianist I watched online, the more likely it is that my fingers will hesitate, trip over themselves and take a tumble.

So as well as practising getting the notes, pace, rhythm, tonality, expression right, I am also practising keeping going when it goes wrong.

I am getting accustomed to the heart-lurch and sense of impending doom, and telling myself this is part of the adventure of performance.

I am getting used to trusting that my fingers will be able to find their way back to harmony and beauty.

I am training my inner monologue not to equate a small stumble with a total collapse of the piece.

I am learning to hop my fingers out of the ditch of the wrong keys and back on the horse of the right keys.

I am realising that by starting at a manageable pace, I am more likely to be able to sustain a polished performance.

I am growing cannier in identifying ‘stepping stones’ where I will be able to regroup if I have a sudden nerve-jangling moment.

I am reminding myself to breathe deeply and be in the present before I set off.

I am noticing that if I look up at the music, if I anticipate a little,  I play better than if I look down at the keys.

I am discovering that mistakes are part of live performance, and it’s how you deal with them that counts.

I am learning how to live.