It didn’t take long for me to have regrets about not writing. Over the past few years I had developed the strength and discipline to turn out pieces that I enjoyed writing on a weekly basis. I felt like I had quit on myself and my readers. The comments I received from people who said they would miss reading “WUTW?” helped give me the confidence I needed to get back on the horse.
So I decided to come back with something a little different. I’m not going to try to be a resource for your weekly music listening plans but I might offer some suggestions from time to time. I’ve decided to primarily focus on providing you with more of the same short, easily digestible vignettes from the theater that is my life. I’m not going to subject myself to the discipline of a weekly deadline. While there are advantages to having that as an incentive to be creative, it also caused me to offer some material that was less than satisfying. You won’t be able to look forward to hearing from me on a regular basis but hopefully you will enjoy some pleasant surprises.
Thanks for sticking with me. Let me know if you want to get unstuck.
At the Third Station of the Cross
A very good friend of mine was getting married and I wanted to do something special for her and the lucky guy. I’m not one to go out and buy presents or a card. Besides being too poor, I’m a do-it-yourselfer. So I wrote them a wedding song. The lyrics were sort of corny, appropriate for an event celebrating the simple undying purity of a couple’s love, but the music was pretty. I figured I could sneak it in at the reception but as it turned out there wasn’t going to be a piano there. So I took the next logical step and asked if there would be one at the church without considering what I was I getting myself into. It wasn’t until I had volunteered to play it during the service that it occurred to me that I was going to be singing and playing the piano in the middle of someone’s Catholic church wedding with a couple hundred people in attendance. The last time I did something like that was at a much smaller and less formal wedding 25 years ago. I hardly ever play the piano these days, certainly not in public, and the only person who ever hears me sing is me. I had the terrifying realization that I had set myself up to possibly ruin my good friend’s wedding. The song had a couple unusual chords and some of the notes were pretty high for my range but at least the song was mercifully short. The two weeks before the wedding, I must have practiced it about hundred times, rarely getting everything right. I discovered that there were so many different ways I could screw it up.
The day of the wedding, I got there early and rehearsed a little bit to get a feel for the piano and the place which was a small brick chapel on a country road. It was a beautiful warm and windy autumn day. As the people started congregating, I tried to calm down by taking a sobering walk through the graveyard, reading the headstones of the not-so-recently departed, most of whom had been born in the 1800s. I went in and took my seat near the wall relief of the Third Station of the Cross, “Jesus falls the first time”. That didn’t seem propitious but the fact that the nearest stained glass window had been donated by a “Fisher” was a small detail that I grasped onto as a good sign. I was searching for any omen that would give me hope. I watched two young children calmly read portions of the Bible without a hitch and figured if they could do it so could I.
After the giving of communion, I headed for the stage to await my turn. For the first time, my eyes met the bride’s and we exchanged knowing smiles. When I finally started, I must have gone into a robotic trance in which I lost consciousness and gave way to the programming of all that practicing. It was a bit like an out-of-body experience when I noticed that I was going to get through it without making any mistakes at which point the leg attached to the foot that was working the sustain pedal started violently shaking up and down and I had no ability to stop it. Like a football player dragging tacklers across the goal line, I plowed through to the dramatic ending where I held the last note of the melody, quavering with an unintentional vibrato.
When I hear you say you love me
I bloom just like the flowers in the Spring
When I hear you say you want me
A voice inside my heart begins to sing
Something in the words you say
Make all my worries melt away
And I can see a brand new day
That you and I can share
All my dreams are coming true
Now I’m standing next to you
And when I hear you say I do
Its your ring that I’ll wear
When I hear you say you love me
I bloom just like the flowers in the Spring
When I hear you say you want me
A voice inside my heart begins to sing
mark
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