CONNECTIONS

I’m working on a screenplay about a family of musicians. The more I understand the Bresson family dynamic, the more an image of a rickety old upright piano sits at the story’s center. While visiting my mother at the senior home where she lives, my daughter entertained residents by playing a piece from Amelie. And just last week my sister, artist Ann Trondson, opened “Day Series,” an exhibit based on collections of images from New York Times articles, each creation outlined in the shape of a baby grand (the image above is Day Series #85).

Is it me? Or are pianos falling from my sky?

Connections are all around us. John Muir wrote, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” The key is recognizing the relationship between these objects, ideas or coincidences in the context of our lives, then asking ourselves what those connections mean. So what does the piano imagery reveal? It could mean I’m in a funk with this cold and snowy winter, the troubled state of our democracy, the politicizing of just about everything, or seeing so many people in my tiny sphere struggling on day-to-day basis.

It could also signify an ending of sorts—my modest yet valuable role in my children’s development as musicians being over (in a larger sense, my diminished role in their adult lives). Thus, the piano is my way of holding on. Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m afraid of letting my kids go… live their lives, succeed, fall in love, make mistakes, struggle. In other words, be human.

Music has always been my balm, but that’s especially true now.

I’ll leave you with a few beautiful sad balms I’m listening to these days: Jonny Greenwood’s “House of Woodcock”, Bill Evans “Spartacus Love Theme”, and Brian Eno’s “An Arc of Doves.”