by Jim Meirose.
So. You want to learn. To play. Piano Play. Learn to. Play. Piano play no. Learn. To play piano play. No. Learn to play. Play what? Piano play. No. But. Learn to play piano for people play for. No. Learn to. No. Learn to play. Play what? No just play. Wrong answer. No. Learn to play piano play no piano how to not play piano for people. Yes? No. Practicing all your life to not know how to play piano. No. Yes. Born knowing how to play piano. Playing piano for people is a great burden. Need counseling and concurrent multiple classes on how to not know how to play piano. Need to practice ten or more hours a day to not know how to play piano for people in the most virtuoso manner possible. Pity those born to high levels of ability. They will need the longest counseling the largest number or concurrent classes to take to learn how to be one who never knew how to play piano. For people. They will on top of that need to practice nearly every no-sleeping non-eating non-caring for the needs of bodily functions how to excel at not being able to play piano for people and not only vertically all hours of every day from birth but horizontally for more than half the years they will live. Perhaps they will pass on without having fully shed the ability to play piano. For people. Terribly horrible it may be is will be yes; terribly horrible to be born with this terribly twisted compulsion to constantly play piano for people combined with being born with the ability to play any piano piece hard or easy long or short loud or soft and any internally measurable gradient of any of these well—the best term is dimensions.
Normal humans do not know how to play any keyboard string bowed plucked percussion or blown instrument for people. Those who do are born with a memory defect also. Even though they came from the womb as fully developed total masters of whatever instrument pulled from the deck for them and pasted into their heads at that particular point in the fetal assembly-line process, because their bodies are not born with the strength or stamina to play immediately, the curse lies dormant in them until at some point when they are adequately developed physically and mentally they by chance encounter the instrument they were born being able to play perfectly for people and latch on; some are lucky and never encounter any instrument at all intimately enough to attempt to play it, or encounter the wrong instrument, try to play, but give it up in disgust or out of boredom after some number of years. But; if the stars align and the cards are right and the dice of life continually thrown for each of us every moment of every day turn up lucky, they hit the instrument chosen before birth and the malady is triggered. For the first years that it works to infect them, they labor under the delusion which is part of the illness, that they are working to develop some innate talent through their own efforts—when in reality, it is the disease that is working to overcome them and transform them from happy innocent young men and women, to miserable tormented obsessive compulsively constantly practicing virtuosos drained over time of any happiness or enjoyment at all. Like chicken pox hiding then blooming into shingles; like a cancer predisposition planted in one’s genes, then blooming into tumors; like being allergic first encountering the allergen programmed to cause a reaction; the musical mania is triggered, takes over—can destroy the afflicted financially socially and many other ways—can cause the emergence of drug alcohol sex or any one of many other concurrent addictions, which, ironically, may destroy the instrumental ability virus but will go on to destroy the individual in their own very different but just as horrible ways leading to the same sorry end. Life failure, sickness of many possible types, and then, almost completely unavoidably, death. Simple one. No. Simple one syllable death. No. Simple. One. Syllable. No. The simple one syllable quick easy to say most final word; death. Hiccup. Non. Yah the musical virus causing causing yes yes yes what in the early stages seems sweet; suddenly swelling music coming again all around lifting all elevating seeming beautiful, but in time under the other side edge of the flooring tilting the room the opposite of the first time setting the lamp swinging first into then out of the stricken soul’s many faces no faces yes faces no faces yah faces like that it peels the faces on no no no the word peeling only goes with off and on and off Bonnie and Dorothy rose on off on off went out of Finney’s room leaving him switching the room off after first drilling a pilot hole into the rock and filling it partially with gunpowder, then instructing an assistant to pour sand in atop the powder this closing the first day. That was the start; but Maestro Rubbinschteen is now here to save him. When the introductory short film was done, the light came on unswitched by man miraculously I mean, you doubt this, Phineas? You doubt there’s magic wrapped all around under around and through the everyday things arrayed near and far all around us? Each and every time you’ve stepped into a dark room and the light’s come on, can you swear on any sized stack of King James bibles that you switched it on? No no, no, you can’t. Come on. Come clean. I know for a fact from my lifetime of study Mr. Gage, that at least half the time it was God or his Son or the big three-headed Ghost-bird that passed by and switched on the light for you. And not just that; there are many things that are done by each of us so many thousands of times a day that we think we do—get this—automatically—and we think that’s why they happen without thinking and thus we have no memory of causing them. No—God! God and his angels do these things for us! God and his angels Phineas, that’s right! And you may wonder why when you came here for a piano lesson you have been shown the film and now I am preaching and the reason being that—you need to let the supernatural come into you and do the playing. You will not do any. You cannot learn to play any Beethoven Sonata for people in one mere year when you never touched a piano before except in jest. And, you may ask yourself, well, Maestro, what if I was born with that virtuoso virus you regaled me about earlier today for no apparent reason that I can see? Then I can do it, because I already can, so it will be easy—so; but I stop you there Finney, because if you had that affliction, it would have blossomed within you when you tinkled away all noodly-stupid on the piano way back when you were a horny young student as your spouse pointed out. You would never have got the railroad job. You would never have been run through the head by any steel bar. But you did not blossom into a piano master. That test, you failed. So now the only way for you to avoid the booby prize, is to fear God. That is the key. Not love. Not believe in. Not born again or bored again or badly bricked under, or any of that pap. It’s fear. Fear. Fear God enough to step aside and let him do his work. You cannot do it on your own, even partially. God does not need your help. Step aside and let him do it all. Step aside and don’t resist and he will restore you back to before the point in the womb where the viruses are passed out, and infect you—then quickly enough that you won’t cease to actually become a fetus again which would rend time and space and—let’s not dwell on that since that will not happen—he will bring you back to the present and there you go, you will know how to play piano for people, but; you need to believe. You need to let go any fear of failure or doubt God has touched you.
So.
Any questions? Good. On to the next phase then Phineas—yes, we must do it now. It’s late and you’re tired, but you have but a year. Don’t waste an instant. By the way, let me drop you a big one. Ready are you?
Sure. What?
I’ve found out what the booby prize is for the piano test.
Really? That’s great Maestro! What is it?
Telling you now is the absolute opposite thing from what’s right, to do.
Why?
It will affect you badly.
How?
The reason is twofold; first, if it is something terrible, which I’m sure you already fear may be true but have some hope it is not, to tell you for sure would block you totally from ever entering the frame of mind to release all fear which will signal God that he can step in and guide you to victory. It will be hard enough the way it is now, where there’s some chance that losing will not lead you to destruction. That’s the first reason. That clear Mister Phineas?
Yes.
Great; then second, if it is not terrible, all fear and tension will drop away. You will stop wanting to win as much as you do now. Actually, the little traffic cop man in your brain will change the road signs and point you away from and then block off entirely the path you need to walk to strive intensely enough to trigger God to take over. God waits in front of the great master control board in what is labeled with the simple term heaven but which is much more than pretty clouds golden mansions white clad blissful souls and clouds over clouds of splendidly arrayed gilded feathered and winged ranks and rows of forever singing God’s praises angel-gangs all flooding the peaks and valleys of the roads bridges tunnels and soaring peaks and plunging bountiful valleys and acres and miles and miles long wide and deep pastures populated with blissfully ecstatic cattle of every type sex size shape and smell who have been granted eternal life fresh feed grassy pastures ponds of pure clear water and sunny blue skies all day every day and beautiful on beautiful star-spangled mild breezy soothing nights designed to lull calm please and settle down and away all care and gently slide the sweet pure blanket of deep restful sleep not only over the gentle giants of the deep pastures but over all of the heavenly kingdom every night every soul rests in fragrant restful sleep, in beautifully shadowed sleep chambers each soul being granted their own vast more perfect than mortals can hope dream or imagine beds of eternal comfort and yes, yes; eternal rest is the term, I mean why not tell it like it is just because in the mortal world the foolish mortals have been brainwashed to believe that the term Eternal Rest signals the thing feared most by every creature sentient to be able to apprehend the meaning of such a concept as death—lower creatures have no idea that they must someday die. Lower creatures cannot even wrap their brains around so abstract a notion—for example—
Maestro, where is this going? I mean no disrespect, but—could you stop and explain what this has to do with me learning to play Beethoven in a year?
Phineas, just listen and soak it in. You wanted me to teach you so I am. Any further questions? Or any from either Mrs. Gage? Huh?
The Finnie-question had solidified the flowing plastic word-writhe of the message into the just stated hard edged answer and the two glass-hard eyes shooting silently the message interrupt me again and the cause is lost I am your only hope so shut your trap got it good I can see way in there past your sludgy eyeballs that you know I am your only hope I bet you have no idea Mister creature of the genus Ignoramus-Phineasis that your impertinence has triggered off a debate between two dry pencil-thin spindly figures seated in a microscopically small square well-lit windowless and doorless room in the dead center of what is left of your once nearly perfectly globular consciousness which was rendered misshapen by the steel rod’s up-plunge in through and out one side rendering your consciousness more or less half-moon shaped but still, by dumb luck, having traveled a path so unlikely that the hand of the savior himself must have guided it knowing that you should not be robbed by chance of the relatively bright future you have a dim chance of obtaining for yourself if you are lucky enough, which you have been, to encounter someone as enlightened as myself in the intertangled network of incomprehensibility which is the brain-piano-ability-to-play-Beethoven and as a matter of fact anything at all in the repertoire ranging from the summits of the various great masters past present and future down to Mary Had a Little Lamb or simply a one-octave C major scale or even so as a single note and even lower the simple ability to sit down at the keyboard and even lower the simpler ability to enter the room housing the piano and even the low lower lowest grain of piano ability which is to formulate and act upon the desire to try to play at all, which you luck to have been by chance born into the skin of the only species of mammal able to conceptualize the playing of any instrument at all, not to mention piano, and also, to be able to conceptualize the notion of music at all. Music. What is music, boy? Ask a dog. A swine. A ruminant. A chimp. Do you want to take a few days or weeks off and test the validity of my position by being assigned as your first lesson’s homework to wander the earth and asking every living creature you encounter if he or she if they know of music? If they know additionally what a musical instrument is? Ah, ah, ah—mister Gage—see how much time is wasted in our finite time remaining for your pedagogy when you metaphorically speaking surprise me when I am exerting maximum effort at the most extreme pressure on my brain and as a matter of fact not just my brain but my whole mortal frame, you suddenly explode up into through and out the top of my surging and surging and striving at maximum pressure brain, an iron rod not unlike that which pierced you that day but formed not of steel but of the following sentence that being maestro where is this going I mean no disrespect but could you stop and explain what this has to do with me learning to play Beethoven in a year thus sucking away my focus thus piercing the big beautiful balloon of wisdom I was slowly and expertly inflating aiming for being given the courtesy of taking the time required to grow it to maximum capacity and then release it into the virtual hole in the center of your forehead designed to accept deliveries of wisdom that each of us has but no one but three Himalayan seers know how to use properly, and that even exists in all lower animal, but, unfortunately for them, only in a vestigial state? Tell you what I will pause now and want, no not just want, but demand, no not just demand, but pull out of you by sheer force of will.
My will is stronger than yours, Mr. Gage.
Do you deny this?
Gage tried to say no I don’t, but nothing; the spirit of experimentation led him to try and say other words; popeye; dither; mouseketeers; biker gang; amanuensis; clitoris and gorilla-hide; each attempt peeling away without his knowledge at the onion-shell the Maestro had formed around him—he kept trying but—but—
Gage, what—cat got your tongue?
My will is stronger than yours!
Do you deny this?
—boat-sailor; lickety-split; ramming bow; galley; slave; oarsmen; battle; blasted; sinking; chained; drowned my God, don’t let it all end this way don’t let it—
Sudden blast-sound shock stars you know Darlene, when they hit you really hard, you see actual bright white well-defined stars on a black background just like in those silly old Felix the Cat or Farmer Grey movies and and and a-n-d-a-n-d he all at once knew again where he was here and why he was here and stripped of all blasphemy by the Maestro’s fierce exorcism, he blurted not inblurting but outblurting no no no actually both he heard it when Rubbinschteen heard it.
I do not deny it Maestro.
Your will is stronger than mine.