October
12, 2002
the piano and i
Listening to: John Mayer - Atmosphere
Reading: it's still study books
Technically I guess today would be Sunday, because it's
already almost 1 am. But like I said, the next day won't start for me until I sleep and
wake to sunshine.
So, I just finished watching the first two episodes of Six Feet Under that premiered here on HBO. It's brilliant so far, dark yet comic, and the characters weren't so typically one-dimensional. I loved the credits, the cinematography of the tree and the moving hands and the flowers wilting in fast-forward. The series itself didn't exude that kind of American-Beauty beauty, there were some snappy cuts to shots, probably because some of it might have been censored, I don't know. But hey, American Beauty was a movie, this is a TV series. The style is rather different, I guess I can't expect breathtaking imagery in each scene.
Does anyone know what was the title of the song they played
at the scene where Nate was jogging and saw his dad board a bus? Something like "I am
still waiting...", it sounded like a good song, and if you happen to know what it's
called, please tell me.
Today I spoke a grand total of ten words. For the entire day. I hardly saw anyone let
alone talked to them. Mum was at work for half a day and out with my sister for the other
half. Kakak did that thing where she's nowhere in sight yet food would mysteriously appear
freshly cooked and furniture everywhere was dust-free. I got out of bed at noon (!) then
had lunch, watched Billy Elliot on TV (picked up on a lot of things the second time
round), went back in my room and just stayed there. I wished I had spent most of the time
with studies but a great deal of it was spent on other things in my room. I kept having to
brush my teeth because I was in a perpetual state of sleep-breath, not opening my mouth so
much. I was such a goddamned sloth today and that Deadly Sin would have been proud.
After dinner (teppanyaki from Za and Mum's shopping trip), just to please my mum I got up and played the piano like I always did when I finished dinner first. I think she's worried that just because I'm taking up the guitar (and loving it) it'll mean that I'll ditch the piano. Quite naturally, I struggled playing. I struggled even when I did practice so it's no surprise that I screwed up without.
The piano is in the living room downstairs, where only my kakak, my mum, and guests go. I only ever went there to practice. It's really my mum's personal space. She sold all the old furniture (ugly things my dad picked out) and now it's this terrific, oak-green, red and woody teak atmosphere that always smells of some kind of incense. The entire mood of the place is so different than other rooms in the house, and despite it being the living room, it's very personal to just the family matriarch and selected company. The upstairs living room is really where everybody goes.
She didn't seem to care much that I was tinkering around trying to find the flow I used to possess in certain pieces, even simple ones like Fur Elise. She walked into the living room with a cigarette lighter, lit some sandalwood incense, lay back on the sofa and of course, eventually Luke found her and curled up on her belly. And she just lay there and listened to me, fumbling, succeeding, fumbling, succeeding...
Quite honestly, I took up the piano and stuck with it for
eight grueling years just to please my mother. She always had this vision of herself, old
and rocking a rocking chair with Old Luke, looking out at her garden and listening to me
playing all kinds of songs on the piano to soothe her. I did begin to love piano music,
but I could never really channel that kind of natural ability with the piano, probably
because it wasn't my natural thing. Do you believe that every person has a natural music
instrument just for them? They might not know or care, but it's possible, y'know? Whether
the drums or the cello or the trombone, it's that feeling that everything falls into place
when you hold it, it all clicks, and when you play the music it's just natural that with a
little practice, you knew this was the instrument you were born to play.
Well anyway, I believed it. And I was a hundred percent positive the piano was not my
instrument. But I played on. Fur Elise, Beauty and the Beast, The Entertainer, Lara's
Theme from Dr. Zhivago, Jealousy, What Kind Of Fool Am I, and I even sightread various
Scott Joplin rags on my favourite ragtime book. Then I played My Funny Valentine, a song
she couldn't recall, and it doesn't sound too good on solo piano, but typical me, I
decided to blanket that fact with my sultry-temptress-wannabe vocals. You know, just to
make things worse.
My mother fell asleep. I don't know if that was a good or bad thing.