How the Fire Started

How the Fire Started

About this I do not lie.  It was like a lightning bolt came out of the sky and so in earnest my interest was set ablaze like a furnace.  What I came to know was this old piano that sat down the hall at my grandmother's house.  We played it and it seemed to play us and so good times and good song sang in our hearts from dawn to dusk.

My mother saw this to be more than window dressing and so she entered me into piano lessons.  I can say that when it was all said and done the nuns were not fun.  There was a proper posture you had to foster.  There was a way you set your fingers upon the keys and there was damn near a way you even held your knees.  Such task masters were hard to please.

Then there were the notes you had to understand in order to fully take command.  The thing that my teachers treated as a curse was that they would play the melody first.  I was exact in playing it back and in succeeding I saw no need for reading.  They acted in fear as if they did not want me to play by ear.  They treated this ability like a scourge and from me they wanted the talent to be completely purged.

A little bit longer I classically learned in Catholic school and so I found that not a single instructor could be fooled.  My ear was my tool and so I saw the taskmasters to be a tad bit cruel.  There were a few of two civilian teachers who were the same at what they saw that did not necessarily put them in awe.  I saw them as cops who were not going to make me stop and so though I no longer bothered with piano lessons I continued to explore and so my spirit of song continued to soar.  I practically played every keyboard I found in every store and so it was that I wanted more.

Soon it was off to high school where I continued to exercise my tool and then there was the knowledge of college.  Whether it was Fayetteville State, Duke or the University of Chapel Hill it was in every one of their practice rooms that I found the piano to be a thrill!  Sometimes when I was alone I would even dabble with the xylophone.  It is what I used to do.  It was a thing that I was simply into in creating music with which to abuse it.  Then I came upon the computer which only seemed to help in lighting the fuse and so I have continued on this wondrous muse.  It's how this fire got started and so from this quest I've never departed.  It goes back to my grandmother's piano.  It is when the skies parted.

Orrin K. Loftin, Explorer

Copyright?  When often it is interesting the gravel upon which we travel.

January 4^th, 2016