Adam, piano teacher

Adam has been my piano teacher for a little over a year. He’s primarily a jazz and blues person, playing gigs locally with his group when he can. While I like jazz and blues, that’s not where I go for sustenance. I’m primarily a classical music person. But I’m at such an elementary level that we work well together, and my assignment for next week is “Scarborough Fair,” a folk song that nestles nicely between genres. 

Before and after our sessions, we often lament the world’s politics, especially the genocide in Gaza and climate change. Today as he left, he mentioned how depressing the movie Don’t Look Up is for him, and he concluded, “It’s so frustrating to know all this terrible stuff and not be able to do anything about it. This is why we make music. You can’t stop Netanyahu or Trump, but you can sit down and work really hard to make something beautiful happen. And why wouldn’t you?”

I’m on a mailing list for a daily poem, and the one I received today is by one of my favorite poets and resonates with what Adam says. Here’s the full poem, and here’s an excerpt:

Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.

When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not.

 —Wislawa Szymborska. 

I’ll see Margie later today. She didn’t get Covid, nor did I, and while I usually see her on Wednesdays, I have another commitment tomorrow.