"when I was young I was really really shy."
"I know."
I stopped banging my head on the piano.
"What?"
"It shows sometimes when you sing."
Finally, someone who believes me. Shy. Terminally. Me. Yes.
She's leaving soon. The atmosphere's changed. Her exams are over, we're working even harder and having even more fun.
We did a motown tribute before starting our first lesson. I played everything I could remember from two months of piano lessons in 1989. I told her the stories of my russian piano teacher with the ruler and the "apples! apples!"
"And you remember all that from thirteen years ago?"
It would appear to have marked me. The important thing being that it marked me enough so that I somehow remember the theory part of how to read notes. Now all that's left is linking that with what I hear in my head.
I finally remembered all the exercises right to not have to follow Maja to do them.
I went up past that second C when warming up. Finally. "Zooo, ooo, OOOOOOOOOOOOO"
Then we started right in on that Schubert piece. Heidenr�slein. The one where most of the notes are at the top of the five little lines, or above them.
We did it over and over. And over. And over. I was sweating. And aching. And near to crying, but oh so terribly far from giving up.
First it was the sharps and flats. I couldn't hear them, not enough to sing them. We tried again and again and it was a crapshoot with real-live steaming stinky crap.
Then we tried more vaccaj's, all sharps and flats, to try to force me into it.
I didn't get it. I couldn't get it. It was beyond me.
I looked at Maja and asked "what do you do with your mouth to change the note so little?"
She put my hands at the juncture of her jaw and I got it.
Then we practiced stretching vibratos into two notes half-away from each other.
THen we practiced that with the D and C-sharp from the piece.
Again and again and again.
Then we ran into more problems. I couldn't get this. I couldn't get that. I couldn't repeat this or that or do it fast enough or hold the timing properly.
Again and again and again until I was doing it with my eyes closed despite the impossible german syllables.
Mmm...mmm...good...but...
Sometimes I even managed to guess what I'd done wrong.
And then, all of a sudden, I sang the whole thing through, almost right. With all the right notes. With promptings from the piano only every other bar. And then without any at all.
And then we started in on the interesting stuff.
"Sing that harder. She's being raped."
"what? Who? RAPED? I thought this was about flowers..."
"What do you think that part means?"
Knabe sprach: ich breche dich,
R�slein auf der Heiden!R�slein sprach: ich steche dich,
dass du ewig denkst an mich,
und ich will's nicht leiden!!!
Of course, when I read out the words I separated the syllables the way they were in the score. The first time.
Apparently, aside from that, I pronounced them right. One obstacle down.
And my guesses? They weren't so far off. Close enough for me to never forget today's german lesson.
It means, essentially, from what I remember:
"The boy said: I will pick you,
beautiful rose from the fields!
The rose replied: I will prick you so that you will never forget how you raped me
For I do not want to suffer..."
And it goes on from there. Crying, halting, suffering and sighing.
And some of those parts, they almost sound like a melody in my mouth.
And Mr. Pyke in the wrong place at the wrong time, at home at the other end of the phone at precisely the moment where I still had it mostly fresh in my head and my exuberance outweighed my terror,
was the most gracious audience.
I'm just a little less afraid to face that new teacher in July.
Just a little.