tucked into the trail – the river trail – are spots i always find i am looking forward to: the curve of the river, the cattails in the marsh, the hill where you look down on the trees along the riverbank, the section that looks like a bayou, the turn in the path where deer linger, this one spot – where the reeds are thick and the turtles are numerous. we hike along and these are touchstones along the way, indicators of how far we have come, how far we have yet to go.

we all have them – the indicators of how far we have come, how far we have yet to go. i think about this now as i walk into my studio.

i spend way more time on the written word these days than on the piano bench. i spend way more time typing on a keyboard than pencil-jotting on scraps of paper scattered above the keys.

i look at high profile artists, years and years after their last album release, after long drought periods, in their 60s, now recording and releasing new albums. and it makes me wonder. it’s been 16 years since i released a full-length album.

sixteen years.

as someone who released fifteen albums in fifteen years that is stunning to me. and, thus, the wondering.

my piano is a touchstone to me, an anchor, something i can touch that is profoundly meaningful to me. i have walked a textured journey in the years i have spent with a piano central in my life, in time that the creating and performance of music was imperative. i have assigned success and failure, acceptance and rejection, support and betrayal to my piano.

and, in the way that enlightenment happens, i am beginning to learn that it is not my piano that is responsible. it has merely been my spokespiece, a vessel through which i might give voice.

instead, it is in that giving of voice – that expression of me – that amplification and celebration of music – that others – people – have squelched the how-far-i-have-yet-to-go, have taken the get-up from my get-up-and-go.

i don’t really know the reasons that one might feel they should push someone else under water, that one might feel the best use of their energy is to abuse or denigrate or minimize someone else, that one might feel that the most humane treatment of someone else is to concoct narratives and sway public or private-circle opinion. i don’t know the reasons why anyone would want to break another person or their spirit, creative or otherwise. i don’t really know the reasons why anyone would do any such things. it’s crushing.

i do know the impact these things have on a person. for no matter how tough one’s skin, how devoted to confidence, how determined, how bootstrapping one might be, there are others who can do great damage and who are – apparently – damned devoted to it.

it’s not my piano’s fault.

and so now – in this great enlightenment or admittance or downright sad awareness – i can see that those people who have done great harm have undermined so much between how-far-i-have-come and how-far-i-have-yet-to-go. and i am thinking – now – that I’ll be damned to let them rob all that from me, to let them take my piano – or my muse – hostage any longer. not that that’s easy. it is a difficult uphill journey.

it’s maybe time to stand in the reeds, hang with the turtles and cattails, get my feet wet in the marsh and walk – or sprint – or, more likely, crawl – toward the bench.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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