The Love of Pahrump Piano Purgatory
Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:46 pm
. . . it is so demented, all of this, the dashed dreams, the defiled grand dame who has been with us from the year after the Titanic sank sitting here in the stifling destructive deathly heat, you cannot treat a beautifully crafted instrument such as this any worse, that is a promise.
There are no steps to this wreck of a littered dead man's trailer, not after the piano escape hatch was nailed shut (the better which to kill a piano by heat) with a 4X8 piece of plywood across the sliding glass door that I fixed when the old man was alive. No, you have to negotiate the detrius of some family that beat it out of there in a hurry, broken toys, paint cans, clothes strewn about, an old couch and an Audi Quattro timing belt cover, and you have to vault up into the back door opening from the dirt below. There is another piece of plywood that leans against the back door because its latch long ago no longer latched. Once you have gotten in, you are facing the "bath"room. A hard left down the "hall" through the crap on the floor and through the crap in the "kitchen" and there is the poor Steinway covered in flyshit cat dander desert dust and spiderwebs.
"Hello my love."
It is sheer pure joy.
I have driven hundreds of miles in the heat, I have dreamed of being here since the last time I said goodbye in March. This piano and only this piano has a sound that I adore, the bright hammered hammers, the clean thunder of the bass strings, but wait! There is the problem of the abuse, the neglect, the horrible senseless heat that is eating the piano dead through every heartbeat I take. With tender trepidation, I open the cover and greet the soundboard with apology. I beg God Himself and the spirit of my dead Dad to please allow the heart of this beautiful crusted piano to be intact. The day that soundboard goes is the day the sound dies.
Many notes, hell every note, are sour from the incredible stress on the frame in this heat. Every year, I miserably anticipate that the pin block will be in ruins with the 25,000 pounds of pull against the drying out maple, but thankfully I only have three notes that are untuneable until I commit my crime of pouring water and a little antifreeze on the pins, then hammer them down. One hundred and ninety some odd strings have to be tuned and it takes me from 10:00PM throught to about 2:30AM.
This tuning was sloppy due to the unbelievable heat, but she still comes to life. There is no greater joy than bringing those lower C/D/E-strings into synchronization with the octave just above. It makes me cry to hear this piano.
I make up my own toons. They come from just seeking that "sound" from this piano. "Variations" the first one here, comes from chords that I like. I have to find the sounds that are just out of the range of known reality. My job is to get them out.
http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x133 ... ationA.mp4
The other piece 2010 My Birthday I originally did in March, but could not make myself play it correctly because it was too damn cold (imagine that). I adored the sound of the piano through the final progression down, however, and I swore then that I would be back to play it in the muscle-relaxing heat. Muscle relaxing, you bet, brain-relaxing too. I still couldn't play it correctly. It was so hot in that fetid air, with the crooked kerosene lamps heating the place further, that I could only bear to stay with a continually wetted t-shirt flapping around on my head.
http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x133 ... thdayB.mp4
This Steinway knows something, though. Through its long story on this Earth, beginning with its birth by passionate craftsmen, through its youth of being a trophy piece of furniture and a toy for the dillitante piano peckers trying to communicate the compositions of others, through to its fallen state in its dreadful current environment, it did nonetheless pass into the hands of a man who had to let out his inner music. This Steinway has been at the front line of human beings who have been driven to channel the Music of Creation, this I know too. This piano, this piano sits in the middle of nowhere and gives her all to the son of a man who never could stick to the damn score, and I love her effort with just about every cell in my being. This piano has witnessed and called forth tears of gratitude, this piano has witnessed and participated mightily in human creativity and love in the middle of hell, and honestly, what piano gets that? This piano has Lived. And I swear to God I do not know how she keeps on keeping on, but I thank her and Music and God and All That Is Real far far from the furniture polish and vacuumed carpets and air-conditioned humidity-controlled quiet of the tidily neglected with the vase on top, and you know what? The damn beauty of this? I think she thanks me too.
Colin
There are no steps to this wreck of a littered dead man's trailer, not after the piano escape hatch was nailed shut (the better which to kill a piano by heat) with a 4X8 piece of plywood across the sliding glass door that I fixed when the old man was alive. No, you have to negotiate the detrius of some family that beat it out of there in a hurry, broken toys, paint cans, clothes strewn about, an old couch and an Audi Quattro timing belt cover, and you have to vault up into the back door opening from the dirt below. There is another piece of plywood that leans against the back door because its latch long ago no longer latched. Once you have gotten in, you are facing the "bath"room. A hard left down the "hall" through the crap on the floor and through the crap in the "kitchen" and there is the poor Steinway covered in flyshit cat dander desert dust and spiderwebs.
"Hello my love."
It is sheer pure joy.
I have driven hundreds of miles in the heat, I have dreamed of being here since the last time I said goodbye in March. This piano and only this piano has a sound that I adore, the bright hammered hammers, the clean thunder of the bass strings, but wait! There is the problem of the abuse, the neglect, the horrible senseless heat that is eating the piano dead through every heartbeat I take. With tender trepidation, I open the cover and greet the soundboard with apology. I beg God Himself and the spirit of my dead Dad to please allow the heart of this beautiful crusted piano to be intact. The day that soundboard goes is the day the sound dies.
Many notes, hell every note, are sour from the incredible stress on the frame in this heat. Every year, I miserably anticipate that the pin block will be in ruins with the 25,000 pounds of pull against the drying out maple, but thankfully I only have three notes that are untuneable until I commit my crime of pouring water and a little antifreeze on the pins, then hammer them down. One hundred and ninety some odd strings have to be tuned and it takes me from 10:00PM throught to about 2:30AM.
This tuning was sloppy due to the unbelievable heat, but she still comes to life. There is no greater joy than bringing those lower C/D/E-strings into synchronization with the octave just above. It makes me cry to hear this piano.
I make up my own toons. They come from just seeking that "sound" from this piano. "Variations" the first one here, comes from chords that I like. I have to find the sounds that are just out of the range of known reality. My job is to get them out.
http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x133 ... ationA.mp4
The other piece 2010 My Birthday I originally did in March, but could not make myself play it correctly because it was too damn cold (imagine that). I adored the sound of the piano through the final progression down, however, and I swore then that I would be back to play it in the muscle-relaxing heat. Muscle relaxing, you bet, brain-relaxing too. I still couldn't play it correctly. It was so hot in that fetid air, with the crooked kerosene lamps heating the place further, that I could only bear to stay with a continually wetted t-shirt flapping around on my head.
http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x133 ... thdayB.mp4
This Steinway knows something, though. Through its long story on this Earth, beginning with its birth by passionate craftsmen, through its youth of being a trophy piece of furniture and a toy for the dillitante piano peckers trying to communicate the compositions of others, through to its fallen state in its dreadful current environment, it did nonetheless pass into the hands of a man who had to let out his inner music. This Steinway has been at the front line of human beings who have been driven to channel the Music of Creation, this I know too. This piano, this piano sits in the middle of nowhere and gives her all to the son of a man who never could stick to the damn score, and I love her effort with just about every cell in my being. This piano has witnessed and called forth tears of gratitude, this piano has witnessed and participated mightily in human creativity and love in the middle of hell, and honestly, what piano gets that? This piano has Lived. And I swear to God I do not know how she keeps on keeping on, but I thank her and Music and God and All That Is Real far far from the furniture polish and vacuumed carpets and air-conditioned humidity-controlled quiet of the tidily neglected with the vase on top, and you know what? The damn beauty of this? I think she thanks me too.
Colin