In reply to yesterday's post: Having written the post I was out buying bananas at the local fruit stand, when I ran into a woman whom I had met coming home from a concert a few weeks ago in the company of a mutual friend/neighbor. It had seemed to me that she was particularly sensitive to matters of sound. In fact, she had begun our conversation with a question so intelligently posed that I took a lot of time answering it: "What do you think will happen to the piano?"
Well, there she was, buying bananas.
"You won't believe this," she said. "I once heard you play the piano. It was on a soundtruck in the middle of 106th St., I don't recall the occasion, but I do remember what you played and I never forgot your playing."
I recall having done this and it must have been easily forty years ago. This sort of thing happens to me every once in a while, that people recall as if etched in their memory, my playing something specific in a specific time and place.
As I explained to my neighbor, who had overheard this conversation, it is because I could never have made it into a music school as a pianist. What people hear is my passion for playing, not certainty that I can "do" it. The huge difference is why I prefer to teach children, especially children with disability, and amateurs: people who share my passion and who don't need to be certain of achievement.
