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Here's my new project. You might remember that when I play the piano, I don't improvise at all. I play classical music only. Well, Cindy, my new piano teacher, is doing her best to move me beyond my self-imposed limits. (And at the same time she says that working with me on the Bach and Brahms has inspired her to practice her classical playing next year. She'll have more time, she thinks, because her first baby is due any day now and she won't be touring with her jazz group. So she'll sit upstairs in her studio, baby sleeping in a basket beside her, and practice her Bach. Let's not disturb her dream.)
Now that I'm seeing a teacher once a month, I'm actually practicing my Bach Partita instead of just running through it over and over. The old joke is true: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.
Cindy has shown me a miraculous chord progression that is actually just two chords, alternating in different inversions as you go up the scale: the tonic chord with an added sixth, and the diminished second. Together, these two chords cover every note in the scale. So for my summer homework, I'm going to learn to play "Don't Get Around Much Any More" with this chord progression. It sounds very George-Shearing-y, with a bluesy close harmony, and it gives the impression that I know what I'm doing, which of course I don't, yet. But I will.
That's the miraculous part.
The wild part? I don't do "wild" on the piano, since you really have to think fast—which I don't do much any more (don't get around much, either). Is "wild" anyplace in my life? Here's how we started a recent week: Ball game at the Christie Pits on Sunday. Husband's birthday on Monday (lovely lunch at the Gallery Grill, where they comped us each a glass of bubbly in honor of the birthday boy; then to Kensington Market where we bought a case of the pretty golden yellow curly-tipped mangoes; then chips and guacamole at home with a bottle of French champagne, followed by crème brulee--Dino's birthday had a food theme). Tuesday was busy all day but nothing wild. Wednesday, busy all day but nothing wild.
I seem to be lacking in "wild." Perhaps I need to re-define the term, civilize it just a bit until I can find evidence of it in my life. Wild. Not tame? Okay so far. Uninhibited? Ferocious? Uncivilized? Natural? Oh, natural works for me. I'm the original Nature Girl ("There was a girl, a very sad and lonely girl . . ." Are you too young for that song? How about "They tried to sell us egg fu young . . ."?)
I'm so natural I can't do a thing with my hair. Product is your friend, say the salonistas, but I'm not convinced that it is. So I keep on washing my hair with castile soap and conditioning it with diluted apple cider vinegar.
You can't get much wilder than that!
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