It's the title of John's album on Spotify. The one that lists him as an artist. I have never attached that particular attribute to him before, but it'll do. Certainly listening to him play the piano back in college added momentum to the speed with which I fell for him.
He had a tape produced of his original pieces, by which I mean a three by four inch red plastic box with brown ribbon inside. In ways I don't comprehend, the notes were stored on the ribbon and danced out of my bedside player every night as I went to sleep. I am not nor have I ever been facile on the keys, but I spent a summer memorizing the easiest of his songs. Then we were married and I left the performance to him. Our firstborn learned the trickiest song, the one that sounds like a
waterfall crashing over rocks.
Two of the pieces on the album are short, as in less than a minute. Perhaps the label "album" is an anachronism, referring back to those black circles who released music through a speck of diamond. I don't understand that either.
The occasion of this miracle, which is what it feels like to me, is the benevolent skills of our son and his wife. Editing and production are their home turf, and they knew how to reel in the notes from John's fingers and fling them to a platform that makes them accessible to people out of earshot. There is even money exchanged, such that if I select his playlist every day for the next year he will get a thin dime.
But it turns out that there are motivations that have nothing whatsoever to do with cash. Creativity is one. Love is another.
Maybe I do understand that.
