I was prepared for today to really stink. And for a long time, it did.
I got up and normal was gone again. I felt the usual pull in my legs and knees.
The ATM that Alan did was a three-ATM hodgepodge of some of the lessons that I found hardest 14 years ago, the Dead Bird Series. Yes, they were easier now, but still challenging enough to leave me mad at the end.
I watched the lessons. I kept seeing the same things, but not really having enough of an understanding of what I was seeing. I THOUGHT I understood, but I had no idea how to put it on the piano. I went back to the practice room thinking, "I've got to bring this to some kind of conclusion. The workshop is ending. I have to make some use of whatever knowledge I've gotten."
But it didn't seem like I had much knowledge. Yes, I was playing better. But it seemed to be a result only of freeing my back and pelvis, and those were still chimeric. I had no sense of what "playing through the skeleton of the hand" meant. I was doing what I thought was right, but who knows?
I was beginning to wonder if it was all just a sham. I talked to the world class pianist. She's taking it all in and using it daily. She missed getting her PhD by one paper. She's had eight-plus years of piano instruction at Indiana and Oberlin, studied with Pressler, teaches at U. Mass. But she never really had to study technique except for some Taubmann. She was finding it all quite legit and useful.
I practiced. I got mad. I went and got some ice-cream. I went home. I took a nap. My lesson was coming closer. I practiced. My back hurt. I was mad, because I didn't know where my pelvis was, where it was supposed to be. I went to my lesson expecting the worst.
Me and another of the participants have this running gag. She'll ask me, "What are you playing today?" I'll answer truthfully, "I don't know." Because I've gone to each lesson with no idea what I was going to play, and the lessons have had almost no music in them, just these attentions to detail.
I played Alan some jazz. He steered my left arm around, followed it, followed my right arm, followed my back. I came into focus, out of focus, I engaged my head. After five minutes of this we stopped. He asked me what I felt. I told him I was in a fog and didn't really know what I was feeling.
He sighed. Then he started teaching me like I was six. Which was okay, because that's about where I last thought about piano technique. He laid it all out for me. "Push up your hand with nothing but your thumb. Push ups. Puuuuussshhhh!" It went on from there. The thumb has to differentiate from the fingers, he said. And each of the fingers does their thing while the wrist is loose.
"No!" he said. "You're falling into the key with your thumb. Push with the thumb!" He took my hand. He guided it. He pressed. He prodded.
And little by little I began to get it. Next thing I know, he's starting to say, "Yes" and "Good," and I'm feeling what he's talking about. I'm not just engaging the head, I'm actually FEELING SOMETHING IN MY HAND that's different when he says "Good." I'm actually feeling what the heck he's talking about.
He takes me through some of the classical pieces, really slowly, two notes at a time, played together so that I can hear the dissonance. Each time, play the notes and move the hand forward into the keys. That movement keeps the wrist from engaging, keeps me from doing it the old way. Mozart movement one. Mozart movement two. Chopin.
Ah. Yes. And now I'm understanding how you can play different volumes and colors on the piano, I'm feeling it, I'm hearing it, I'm doing it. Sounds are coming out of the piano that sound like Bill Evans, like Duke Ellington, not their notes, but their sound, their tone. Oh, I think. I get it. I get this.
Walking for the first time. Walking on the piano. My hand actually working, the fingers actually pressing into the keys of their own accord. Like a real pianist.