Ivories, That too!

Keeping in shape.
My hub is very envious.  He works his tail off keeping his lip(s) from becoming mush. I go away and don't see a keyboard for 5 weeks.  I rehearse/practice/play two days later.  There's something about using your fingers, (maybe it's the computer keyboard - however, iPods don't help) and everyday knitting that makes it not that difficult.
So much for philosophizing on dexterity, but what about playing the pedals on the organ?  That's memory too.  And I really feel that that talent is subjective to... so many things.  One minute it's working, and the next I tell my heel from my toe.  When pedaling goes awry for someone else, I'm the last to smirk.  I don't even roll my eyes... It's a phenomenon that scares the B-G-B's out of me every time I play.
Unlike knitting, which I can throw in the corner, or stomp on, rip it out, and/or ignore, pedal notes played in a highly resonant chamber are out there never to be retrieved.
Such is life.  And we organists become calloused by it. Oddly enough, the public will withstand a great deal before dealing with it... When it goes well, "how sweet it is!"

Karmøy, Norway, M and his trumpet (August 2009)

Hands

What incredible instruments we carry around:  Hands!!
Fingers, especially... what they do for us.
And what we use them for--mine are pretty well trained to knit, sew, play keyboard music, and... a multitude of other things.


I most noticed my grandmother's hands.  She would proudly hold them up to display how her fingers would point off in different directions--around corners even!  They were an amazing mess, but they produced the best fried walleye, autobiographical stories in her scrawling handwriting, quilting, sewing, knitting, crochet, paintings, cakes, breads, ROLLS (who could forget her rolls?), and...and... the best advice, compassion.  She couldn't surprise me with new projects; that was to be expected. But often she would make, what I consider, progressive-thinking comments about events, people's actions, etc that were totally the opposite of what one would expect from a woman in her 80's or 90's. She was always open to new things.


Yet I most remember her hands... I see them everyday now in my hands!  How surprised she would be to realize that my hands are becoming like hers.  Not only in shape but also by what they produce.  It's as if I can't type fast enough, or knit fast enough, or ... it's our productivity.


Here's a glimpse of my grandmother's hands: (Mine)

And Hers, 26 years ago: