Decades ago I entered a competition in which I had to write a 150 word description of myself as if I were the protagonist in a novel. I was one of the winners. Here's what it said:

She saw herself as the heroine of her own literary affairs du coeurs. She'd had three husbands, an inter-dimensional relationship with a famous Russian, a liaison with a younger lover doing time in a federal penitentiary. Her most recent passion was with a man who'd left due to fear of his own magnificence. Drama spilled into poetry, stories, novels. It was her identity, her inspiration. She wore mostly black. Soon, however, she became too wise for sorry stories. Angst loosened its narrative grip. She stopped coloring her hair, let it wind free in wild silver curls. She smiled a lot. For the first time, she experimented with the possibilities of yellow. But then, sitting in front of the keyboard on an almost spring morning, chickadees trilling in the bare branches of a sycamore, she wondered what in the world she could write about now that she was happy.

John William Godward Girl in Yellow Drapery

My Yellow Skirt

I thought about my connections with yellow. There was the RA — often representative of the Egyptian Sun God — at the beginning of my name. Even though the sun is more often thought of as a masculine energy, there are many ancient mythologies where the sun was worshipped as a goddess. In Northern European, Celtic, Inuit, and Japanese traditions, the sun is a female deity. There are many today who also recognize the sun as goddess with the feminine attributes of life, warmth, nurturing, and creation. Over the years, several of my friends have called me Ra, something I rather enjoyed.

But my most significant connection to yellow comes from one of my beloved non-physical teachers who told me a long time ago that I was vibrationally of the Yellow Band. She also referred to this as the Michelangelo Band and the Romantic Band, as in the romanticism of 19th century art. The Yellow/Gold band, she explained, was responsible for much of what, over the centuries, has been known on this planet as “great art.”

Even though this is a major aspect of my Soul, I did not choose to express on canvas or “on stage” in this lifetime. I did, however, retain cellular memory of what it feels like to have a faerie body that can lift into a perfect grand jèté, or a voice that can vibrate a heart-rending aria, or exquisite hands that can slide an impossible rhapsody across a keyboard. The body I chose in this life had no such gifts. But because that kind of artistry is a major aspect of my Soul, on several occasions in this life, I have “recognized” others “on stage” with whom I have a soul connection. (see The Soul, Other Lives, and Interdimensionality: A Perspective)

This larger association with “great art” has sometimes caused me frustration on many levels and in many arenas. But it has also inspired me to explore some of these soul attributes even with my physical limitations, music being one of them.

Music nudged at me when I was about twelve or thirteen. My parents had broken down and bought me the piano I'd begged for, and I began taking lessons with Mrs. Stein. As I wrote in my memoir, Rare Atmosphere: An Extraordinary Inter-dimensional Affair of the Heart:

…Mrs. Stein, pronounced Shtein, my teacher, was a somber, unreasonable Jewish-German émigré. Once a week, she came to our southeast Bronx apartment, assignments in hand, disapproving look across her stern brow.

In Junior High School at thirteen, my fashion idol was beautiful, air-brained Tina Ferrano, who I let cheat off me on tests, Tina Farrano, who all the boys went gaga over. Following her example, I shadowed my lids with iridescent blue, lined them in kohl black liner that slanted upward at the outer corners, applied three coats of mascara, maybe four on piano lesson days. It drove Mrs. Shtein crazy. She insisted I remove "those horrible bleck eyes" before I sat down at the keyboard. "You hev too much make-up," she would tell me, as if it were any of her B I business. On and off for two years, she'd made me practice scales and boring songs from the Thompson Modern Piano series. I hated scales. I hated baby practice pieces. I was not good at either...

I don’t remember how long I continued before I lost interest in the piano and my lessons were scheduled farther and farther apart until they were cancelled completely. It wasn’t until decades later that another piano would come into my life.

At forty-six, a year after I'd moved to Asheville, I met a friend of a friend who tuned and restored pianos. I'd loved and enjoyed listening to classical music all my life, but now I again wanted a piano of my own, was again drawn to become a participant, at whatever level, in another art form that played in my soul, one that moved me deeply.

I convinced this friend to store a piano at the house in which I then lived. It was a beautiful but partially sick white baby grand he lacked room for at his workshop. It had been in a flood, and although it was tuned, the sustain pedal didn't work correctly above middle C. No matter. I had it for several months, practicing, in private only, every day—Classics for Adult Beginners (Chopin transposed into G, Brahms into F); easy versions of Strauss waltzes, Joplin rags, Andrew Lloyd Webber, anything I could handle with only elementary lessons as a teenager.

But then something miraculous happened. I actually composed two short pieces of my own.

I had no idea where they came from. I “received” a small section at a time that I “played with,” until I could remember it enough to move on to the next section. I couldn’t write anything down. I could not write music. I wound up playing the pieces over and over until I knew them well enough to record them on a cassette tape.

Another couple of decades later, after I was able to buy my own Yamaha digital console piano, inspiration for a few more short pieces “happened.” I mostly practiced them over and over so I wouldn’t forget them. And, since I did not come equipped with “piano hands or brain,” I was almost never able to play a piece through without messing up…except for one amazing time.

Photo by Ashley on Unsplash

During these last couple of months, and after a long hiatus, I started practicing a little at the piano. I found some old sheets of music that I had photocopied at the library ages ago, something I did often in the days before computers. Feeling brave, I set The Beautiful Blue Danube by Johann Strauss on the music holder. Although a fairly easy level IV version, it is six pages long, which I’d taped together to open like three left and right pages in a music book. Trying to coordinate my fingers and my brain, In a moment of frustration I figured out that I’d been practicing this piece for over twenty-eight years and still can’t play it through.

It also occurred to me that I had no record of any of the little pieces I’d composed. That one very old cassette tape on which I’d recorded those initial two compositions was long gone. Plus, my hands are older now, stiffer now, and in truth, I find the feel of playing on a digital piano difficult, so different from the smooth action of a fine acoustic instrument.

I decided to make it a priority to figure out how best to record my few musical miracles. My Yamaha was pretty old and my computers pretty new so it was virtually impossible to easily connect with midi cables. Plus, I live in an apartment and only play with headphones on, so I cannot record directly while I play. Besides, it might take forever to get a mistake free version. What I decided to do was practice then record each piece, one at a time, into the piano. Then as each piece was completed, I would make a recording off of the piano’s playback without using the headphones.

In the end, I have so far only been able to get two pieces recorded, which, after much deliberation, I decided to share here on the blog. Each was duplicated directly from the piano with a different app and device. Neither is very good, but I will continue working on recording the few other pieces so I can have a record of them.

Two Short Pieces

I think this first piece was the second one I created decades ago. Years later, I added words to it, and, after I got my Yamaha, I added the Choir enhancement to the last section. I don’t know that I actually named the music, but the poetic words are called The Eyes of Love. Not a good recording, but here goes. And, although I don't know of any way a digital console piano can be "tuned," I do think my keyboard sounds "off."

The Eyes of Love

Whispering shadows
Stir azure-scented day glow
Hushed reverie in sweet memory
Of timeless embrace

Starscape, jeweled night
Sapphire spectacle in cooled light
Fiery rhapsody in dreamtime harmony
Made real through the eyes of love

Petals of the heart
Secretly unfold
I see the face of one whose gaze
Is music to behold

He takes my hand in grand and gentle sway
Like heather in the wind
And once again I know I’m destined to give in

Waken angel
Shake the slumber of a feigned spell
Clear your mind and finally see the mystery
Revealed through the eyes of love

*          *          *

This second piece was composed sometime within the last maybe eight to ten years. I added background strings throughout the whole piece, although you can't really hear them on this problematic recording.  And also, I do mess up for a couple of seconds near the end, but I picked it up quickly, so I don’t think it’s too bad.