Today Yoko and I did really well when we were playing Satie, enough to give ourselves a big congratulatory smile. But when we played the Grieg, which we had known well just a while ago, it was not so good with mistakes tumbling over each other and our smiles turned to laughter while playing.
Then I told Yoko that yesterday I showed some slides in my figure drawing class (and then projected some onto the model to create interesting compositional elements). One of the slides was Matisse’s Piano Lesson. I told the students it had been a favorite painting of mine early on. It reminded me of the days in my youth when I was practicing the piano, feeling trapped behind the keyboard, with a parent in the next room saying (because I used to like to improvise) (and I repeated to the class in a very funky nasal reprimanding voice): “If you can’t play it right, don’t play it at all!” And one of my students said “I have a good doctor if you need one.”
Well, I still play and not always right. So that’s right!
Posted by leya at November 24, 2004 04:36 PM