Happy World Piano Day. (Patreon)

Hello my loves.

I just wrote a little thing for social media and it made me so weepy I wanted to share it over here as well. I know we thinged this piece with Luke recently - but….it’s so good and it’s #worldpianoday!!! 🎹♥️🎉

So: a word.

Maybe someday I’ll play a piano to a stadium of 50,000 people like Elton John, Billy Joel. Maybe someday I’ll finally get my Beethoven down and play Carnegie Hall in a black dress.

Who knows.

But to be able to play piano in spontaneous and perfect harmony like this - with a fellow pianist - surrounded by friends and food and kids and wine and dogs….this is what success feels like to me.

If you do it right: this is how it ends. You get to do THIS.

I have been playing (and struggling with) pianos all over the world for 40+ years. i had a difficult relationship with the instrument when I was growing up. I didn’t like practicing, and I didn’t have the skills - or patience, perhaps - for sight-reading. I often felt like a failure.

I’ve learned to overcome all of that. The way I play music is the way I play music. I no longer let “good/real piano player” and “bad piano player” exist as a binary in my mind. We are all just playing.

And nothing has brought me pleasure like this eleven minutes I spent improvising with my piano-brother Luke Gajdus on a mountaintop in New Zealand a few months ago, the day before I flew home to America.

I was so full of hard feelings. Joy. Sorrow. Ambivalence. Confusion. Gratitude - so much gratitude.

The piano caught it all, held it all.

The film was released here via patreon. Had I not had patrons, I probably wouldn’t have made this film. I am always indebted to them for inspiring and cheerleading me.

You made this with me. You are holding me in this moment.

Luke and I made this entire piece up as we went along.

But it took us decades to be able to play like this. We speak a language. Piano-ese.

Play for the joy.

Play for the joy.

Sing cause it’s obvious.

Sing with your strings, with your drums, with your hands, with your brush.

It doesn’t matter how or where or when or why.

Just sing.

I love you all. I’m reading comments for new r hour or so, then again in the morning.

Althing tomorrow (probably). I’m working on it.

xx

AFP