The second most difficult thing I do is play music. I can’t read music and have no idea about notes, chords, or anything one should know if pursuing music. I find it is the same with painting.
I think the things I enjoy the most in this world are things I don’t understand and love trying to.
How fortunate am I that I am so incapable and unknowing?
There is no place but up.
I bought this piano when my child was born. it was 500 dollars on craigslist. It was owned by a cute old couple who had owned it since it was new, they had a dehumidifier inside running when it was stored and had taken care of it. It was out of tune but in good order to be tuned. I never had it tuned.
I drove it home strapped to a 6×9 trailer, down dirt roads ravished by storms. I moved it through the elaborate levels of entry I had built into my home, and not thought about the day I would try to move a piano in.
Its final spot upon arrival was in my great room. There my child grew up playing it, like me, for the sound and the struggle. and we banged on it for years.
Now it has been 12 years. Our piano is in its second home with us. It has still never been tuned. I have never learned anything other than how to make some enjoyable sounds through an enjoyable out-of-tune piano with some broken keys.
But now my Rose wants to learn to play. I think I have been waiting for this day. Because my favorite part of teaching him is that I get to learn at the same time.
I am going to try and capture some of this for him. Thinking about memories and experiences in life. Especially those with the ones you love. All wrapped up in a digital package of videos and thoughts and stories. That is art.
It’s like sending a message in a bottle. A new way to capture even more of the nuances of time and emotion. Of experience.
I have spent a lot of my life hiding. Artists. People don’t really understand how I am the way I am. I have a hard time being “normal”. My dad’s line about me sums it up. “Roger’s a good boy, he’s just a little weird”. That really is me. I love that me and never really needed anyone else to.
I try to not bring it into the picture. The edges of me are strange enough. Before my brother died he was talking about wanting to put himself out there in the world more. He just didn’t know what to say. The thing is he could say anything. Everyone loved his stories and him. He was my hero and everyone’s favorite human. He really found a beautiful path in life and he wanted to share that. I see after he is gone, how much we all would have loved those pieces of him to be out there.
Where my brother had the market on being cool I have it on being strange.
I had my first heart issue a couple of weeks ago, a type of Arrhythmia. I have had health issues for years. There was a moment I thought it was all over.
I was cutting a large section of a tree in My front yard, about 20 feet up, with a chain saw. I was in a harness, I had three points tied off, and was safe from the fall. I had the safety in use and the chain saw was tethered to swing away from me in a fall. I had the branch I was cutting, grappled, and held in place with tension.
I don’t take chances with my life. I am too valuable to my child.
What I was not prepared for was my heart. It hit pretty quickly. all the energy left my body. all my strength. It was so strange. It was like all my muscles forgot how to behave. I was letting the ropes I had in place guide me into a squatting position on the branch. I was able to guide the drift of my arms and the chainsaw in my grasp to another branch.
During this moment I felt like my chest was concaving, It was a feeling I had never known. It was a distinct feeling I had before I felt my heart. I felt my heart where it usually has the feeling of beating, hurt. It felt like it was hurting. My whole body felt like it was shutting down and some feelings of intestinal evacuation and loss of that governance took hold. I felt colder. There was a deep shiver in my core and then the tunnel of darkness began to close in my vision. This was all in the course of seconds.
As the light reached the size of a penny in my hand and I had calculated all of these events along the way, I had one thought that I knew could have been my last.
I asked if I could have a little more time with my Rose. I said please and I found my way back.
To whom or what that request was asked is a matter of belief and individuality. I have spent much of my life contemplating that. Because I am an artist. I am pretty sure, without debate, we all know who I was speaking to. I know I am grateful there is something there that feels like a good parent. Just for me.
And that is who I am always trying to be for my child. I am so thankful to be able to have experienced this. If I have a day, a week, a year, or I live to be 1000. I will be so grateful for every second I get to be there. How grateful I am to be here.
It’s a second push for me. After the COVID trials. To put out more of myself into the world. Just for that possibility, that when I am gone, if my Rose needs me, there will be little pieces of me around. That is the being I asked for more time from. The one we all write stories about. The one who will assuredly deliver these pieces in perfect synchronicity.
The ideas of me with a little bit of my harmony.
