Lesson Unlearned

I guess I play the piano. I mean, I think I do.

We grew up with a little Story&Clark in our living room on Oakmont Ct. It started innocently with that song where you roll your fist on the three black keys, then pound the flanking black keys twice as hard you can in between each fist roll... You guys know the one. I would do that nonstop, because it really didn't have an ending. And man, it sounded as good as it felt.

From there it all came pretty quickly: Mary Had a Little Lamb, Heart and Soul, the Top Gun Theme. Pretty soon, my left hand joined in, and I was making up my own pretty little songs. PS:Here's the great thing about not knowing how to write music down... You must never stop playing or you will forget it all. Therefore, I never stopped playing.

Lessons were never even considered. To be completely honest, I didn't even know such a thing existed. The piano bench was the most popular seat in my house, and maybe my parents knew that the last thing we needed after a long day of guilt and redemption at St Rose of Lima Catholic School were rules and regimen. Thankfully, apart from the actual architectural structure of our house, structure was the one thing that was brilliantly lacking in our home.

Papa Joe played piano. Without a doubt. He was a bona fide piano player. One of those never-took-a-lesson-in-his-life types. He would play anything and everything for hours. And purely for enjoyment. His and ours. We would dance wildly around my grandma's living room while he banged out the 12th Street Rag and the Flight of the Bumble Bee, following each note with a corresponding leap, spin ,or crash. Then he would kindly slow into Love is a Many Splendored Thing, and as the sweat on our collective brows would begin to cool, he'd pull out his ace...

Twilight Time.

Ugh, Twilight Time. Even at 5 years old, that song broke my heart. No words, just music. And it moved me deeply. I've been able to hear it only in my head for the past 7 years or so and I cannot think of one thing that I want more than to hear him play it again. In his own special way. The way that I have searched for and have failed to find.


When Papa passed, I mourned. I never understood that word before that moment he left. But then I knew it so well, because he was gone, and he took it all with him. His scratchy beard, the smell of car grease on his skin, the nicknames that only he called us, his piano playing. Gone. I cry now while I write this, because the loss remains. And I want it all back.

I decided to start taking piano lessons. I decided it would be a good idea to learn what notes were and where they lived on the piano. I decided that it was time for me to know what all those little loopdeedoos and flags on sheet music were. I decided that this would be the way for me to finally be able to play all of his songs to myself so I could listen to them again.

I went for my first lesson today. The instructor asked me what my skill level was, to which I replied,

"I don't know where 'C' is. I play by ear. I know nothing."

Then he asked me to play him something. I played him about 10 seconds of a Chopin song Angelo had taught me 15 years ago. He had a tape casette recording of this song and we obsessed over it until it became this ridiculous mutation of the original.

This definitely gave the instructor the wrong idea. I think he [so wrongly] thought that I knew what I was doing.

The next 30 minutes was a whirlwind of phrases such as, "No start with your third finger, " "One and a-two, and-a skip, and a-three, and-a.." "that empty circle with the dot means it is 2.5 notes" and the very popular "Start again." At minute 28, I started crying. Commence meltdown sequence...

"I don't understand anything that you are saying! All the ones and a-twos... and...I don't know what b flat means! Or how to find it! I don't know any of this! I was being honest! I only know how to memorize which keys get hit at the same time and the rest is my ear saying which way to go! Up or down! Up or down! I ONLY KNOW UP OR DOWN! "

When I got home tonight, I played every song I knew to exorcise the lesson demon. Half way through an old Sicilian folk song that Papa Joe frequented, it hit me...

I'm a Bellomo. We don't do piano lessons.

Just figure it out. Use whatever fingers you want. Let your ear tell you where to go. If you get stuck, call your brother.

Because, here's the thing... I want to hear Twilight Time again. Badly. But I don't want to hear a "lessoned" version of it. I want to hear Papa Joe's version. The version that's in my blood. So help me, I am going to find it, and when I do, I'll finally be home again. And I cannot fucking wait.