Naked Chords
~ Gloria Gaither, lyricist to “There’s Something About That Name”, reflected on the piano-playing of the Christian worship song by Jordan Baize, 34, under an open sky after a Kentucky tornado had blasted off his roof before Christmas 2021.
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Dear Alex,
The same scene overlooked, an old songbook replayed, the moon our mirror a night - two palmfuls of January days have slid beyond our grasp. Happy Nude Year, stripped of old habits that have held childlike wonder captive, undressed for the splendor of a brief bath unknown to most folks in earlier centuries and modern slums.
How could things of age and routine, thoughts and shadows expected, be seen and scintillate anew?
Yesterday afternoon I resumed playing on my electric piano keyboard, the same one brought by the usual delivery man to my porch just before Christmas, its whole and half notes unchanged on digital music sheet. A chord in C major should strike the same resonance on any given stroke of weather and mood. I was re-learning the theory of chords using an interactive app after having canceled the vision of my childhood piano training too many New Years ago. Nothing sounds the same when the heart reopens the ears.
The narrator in the animated app told me to try a stance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata in E major. Consider the pattern, 1-3-5 right finger position, listen and play along with the pre-recorded magic: Beethoven is sharing a bite-sized genius of his ever-present being in practice mode with me right here in my living space.
I know this piece by heart, memorized the entire movement on piano decades ago, aged it in my iTune library. It is one of few that speaks to me. I don’t remember its broken chords in double sharps. I’ve not known it was masterminded in the art of chords now accessible to me only because I sat still.
January is breaking through the New Year with longings that if normalized would cease our heartbeats.
Yours, Kate
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