Op 10, No 2, for Maisie

 Sometimes you just play, no matter what else is going on. You do it because you can and someday maybe you won’t be able to. Or you do it because it is your first love, the thing you gave as an answer when adults asked you what you wanted to “be” when you grew up. Or you do it because Maisie is just laying there serenely and while away from her family seems calmed by the piano and in a few days you are getting surgery and you also had surgery not that long ago and post operatively no matter how much you want to play you will not, you cannot.

Maisie knows me mainly as a pianist. For years now I descend upon her home early mornings or weekends and play with one of her people. Or she comes over with her person and plays here. Maisie finds Monk fairly obnoxious. Which I don’t really get, but I don’t speak dog so who knows what he is saying to her. Mostly he’s a goofball whereas Maisie is more on the classy side.

Opus 10 number 2 is, if I remember correctly, the first Beethoven Sonata I ever played. I probably nailed it at age 8, and truthfully at 7 times that age now and with very little recent practicing (see above re surgery), it’s a bit rough, or should I say ruff? It’s OK though. This piece is a lark. A little piece that Ludwig could probably improvise with his 2 pinky fingers while holding a conversation regarding the importance of art and music in the true understanding of human nature. I love its lightness. It doesn’t seem too concerned with itself. But still it delights. Maisie might find it meh-sie but she also may be dreaming about the beach and the woods and bacon and everything good. 

Right at this very moment, despite an unstable spinal cord, I can play piano well enough. In fact my recent surgery fixed a fumbling right hand. The next surgery will get a nice protective moat around my spinal palace, so it may continue to reign over my body with stable decision making and jewel-like precision. If only certain other folks in power would do the same…

Sometimes you just have to play, even when the world is in chaos. I do love Beethoven but my main go-to recently has been Bach. The Well-Tempered Clavier with its 48 preludes and fugues provides endless challenge, while it is also comforting in its familiarity. It is ordered and perfect and stable. Stability is underrated and overlooked. Like breathing it is often forgotten until it disappears or is threatened. The breath of the holy spirit as well as the wind and fire is celebrated on this day of Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter. If Bach is the breath, Beethoven is the wind and fire. A Shining Star, giving strength to carry on, yeah.

Just Maisie it’ll all be OK.

Opus 10, No 1, for Monk

 This the fifth sonata was part of a group of three that the 1798 (or so) press reviewed as “three nice sonatas”. I am not sure anything by Beethoven can really be called “nice”, unless said in an edgy drawl, “noiicccccee”. Anyway this sonata is Mozartean in the way a single wrong note is like showing up to a work meeting naked. It doesn’t exactly ruin the meeting but no one really wanted to see that over morning coffee.

Playing Beethoven for dogs will not change the world, but it might bring joy (to me? to the dogs? to someone walking by?) and joy, they say, can be an act of resistance. Playing Beethoven for dogs does not express the grief of the execution of Renee Good just blocks away from the execution of George Floyd. Maybe it does send out some well-crafted sound waves into the atmosphere, serving as an antidote to the venom of hate.

When I lived in Minneapolis I enjoyed eating ice cream when it was 20 degrees below zero. I once left the music school at the U and was met by about 30 angry looking raccoons, eyes all fixed on me, glowing. I enjoyed soup and bread at St Martin’s Table. I snow shoed to the video store. I worked at a bookstore owned by Meredith Birney Baxter’s brother. I studied genetics and heard Beethoven’s 7th symphony live. I was a student in a lab studying malignant hyperthermia. I fell in love with organic chemistry.

Minnesota is not for the faint of heart. Though my father once received a heart transplant there, so..

what I’m trying to say is it does not surprise me to see the people there, not all of them but many of them, rise up together as a community to help their neighbors. Which, along with welcoming the stranger and loving your enemies is an actual thing that Jesus said was super important.

As for Opus 10, no 1 and my little brother Monk witnessing it, I rather enjoyed this piece and am glad to have explored it. Monk full on snored during the slow movement. I think he might need a CPAP machine, though in his case I suppose it would be a CPUP. And though Monk slept through most of the sonata he surely noticed at least subconsciously, the brief moments resembling the fifth symphony, another gem in c minor. Beethoven is a doggone genius!

I will keep on with the Beethoven Dog Project. It is this small grounding bit of joy and a challenge on many levels. What’s the point? The grounding allows me to keep perspective in this time of uncertainty. It reminds me that although some people have chosen to revel in the suffering of others, that most people like a good tune and a community of friends. The challenge keeps me learning. Can I play one phrase in the sonata in a way that cracks open a bit of the mystery? Can I find a deeper relationship with music? Can I slowly drive my husband and dog insane with nonstop Beethoven, piano lid up?

If Opus10, no 1 has me at a work meeting naked, God only knows what the Hammerklavier will bring. Hopefully something “nice”…

https://youtu.be/h8vZMXKXv7s?feature=shared

Opus 7, for Kiya, Garbo and Garbo’s daughter

 The “Grand Sonata”, Op 7, has been a struggle. It looks easy on the page. But I’ve had difficulty connecting to it. Usually this has nothing to do with the piece of music and everything to do with my own distraction. There has been plenty of that. I often find myself practicing a passage while thinking about something else entirely. I remember one of my piano teachers as a child telling me no matter how well you know a piece it’s best not to be thinking about what you are having for dinner when playing it. I remember my music school idol, Meg, telling me when she teaches piano that when practicing, like cleaning a window, if there is dirt there and you just keep rubbing it around, you get nowhere. I remember spending hours upon hours in the basement practice rooms in music school until I couldn’t not do it. I remember studying for anatomy class with such intensity and focus that I quite literally knew where absolutely everything in our bodies was located. Studying anatomy and music is not all that different. You take the parts and dissect them then see how it all fits together.

I was thinking recently about whether, if it was measurable, I have now held my phone in my hand for more hours than I have held the hands of my children, husband, parents, dying patients. It’s hard to pay attention when the next thing is just a scroll away. 

Still, I have had some great moments with Opus 7, the greatest of all being with the dogs and people who came to listen to it. For the last 10 years I have celebrated Beethoven’s birthday with “my patients”, with a performance of one of his sonatas. In the last 4 years this has included the violin-piano sonatas with my uber-talented violin pal, Jenny, graciously offering her time. This year we did sonata no 8 at one center on Tuesday, another big and somewhat uncharacteristically joyful piece by LVB. On Thursday I brought the grand opus 7 to another center (we have 3 centers, and I’m still scheming on getting a piano to the 3rd). 

Which brings me to the dogs. Therapy dogs who like to hang out with people and offer their healing presence. I’m not sure about how the other people present felt, but this doctor was over the moon with the chance to share music with an amazing group of people and dogs on a sunny day near the winter solstice in celebration of one of the greatest composers of all time. Right before I started, someone asked if I could play boogie-wooogie on the 100 year old piano, donated to us by Fred and Joan Tempas. Right after I played, Kiya’s person asked if I wanted a hug, and as I reached to hug him he said “actually I meant the dog”, and so I kneeled and Kiya laid her head on my shoulder and really what else matters?

For the record, I am a midwestern, Lutheran, Buddhist, classically-trained perfectionist who worries non-stop. No one wants to hear me playing boogie-woogie.

I am putting grand opus 7 to rest for awhile. I need to come back to it with fresh eyes and fingers, and better attention. And anyway the opus 10s are calling. It takes practice to practice piano properly. Just because the world seems to be unraveling around us is no reason to allow the mind to wander when playing Beethoven, or when reading, or talking with a beloved. Attention is needed when laying stethoscope on chest, first right then left sternal borders, then apex, then axilla, asking oneself if the sound is soft, medium, loud, systolic, diastolic, whooshing or clicking, galloping or straightforward, boogie-woogie or Bach? 

On Beethoven’s actual birthday (though debated, December 17 was his baptism day so probably he was born on December 16 based on traditions), my husband makes killer Mac and cheese. It was LVB’s favorite food. We revel in the rich, artery-threatening delight, imagining some Vienna eatery of the early 1800’s, and hoping at least sometimes Ludwig had a friend to share a meal with him.

Things are profoundly imperfect. Some days I can hardly breathe. I was chatting with a patient in a nursing home recently, someone who is an ambassador to other residents there, hearing their concerns and advocating for them. As I stood at the end of their bed,  with my awkward privilege of being able to walk out of there on healthy legs, they expressed their bewilderment at what has become of this country which is becoming unrecognizable. After several beats of silence, except for someone’s TV blaring in the background, I said I just keep trying to show up each day for the person in front of me, with kindness and in service. Which is what the person, stuck in that bed does every day. As does the canine masters of healing, the true experts of quiet comfort, given with a doggy smiles and cold, boopable noses, the Kiya’s of the world.

In the imperfection of beginners mind we practice. As the Zen master would say, fall down 8 times, get up 9. Then go to your piano bench and practice opus 10.

Opus 2, Number 3~For Monk & Flora

 Mr Rogers reminds us when we witness catastrophe to “look for the helpers”. When the house shakes, the ice cream cone drops, the glacier melts, the hate speech spews, the ash of the volcano covers towns, the team loses, the long and complicated chart note you are almost done with randomly disappears, look for the helpers. When you find a spot on the X-ray, when the Supreme Court looks the other way, when you realize the days are getting shorter, when your heart cracks open wondering if your child will survive heroin, look for the helpers. 

Fred Rogers both soothed and irritated me as a child. I thought his sneakers were lame. He was really nice and calm. The make believe royals freaked me out. 

What I did not realize at the time was that he was a trained composer, who liked the story arcs to resemble the structure of sonata form (exposition, development, recapitulation, coda). His co-composer, jazz pianist Johnny Costa, based the opening theme on the Beethoven Sonata I played for Flora and Monk today. Specifically the start of the 4th movement. Mr Costa was practicing Op2, No 3 and thought it would be cool to do the LVB flourish in “Won’t you be my neighbor”. Of course he never played it exactly the same way twice, being a jazz cat. Actually I doubt Beethoven ever played anything the same way twice either, being a master improviser himself. 

Listen here:

https://youtu.be/Xx-ncTtaOJY

Listen here! What I am trying to say is the helpers are the ones who make beautiful things, and the ones who speak to a neighbor, the ones that bring food to someone who is shut in, the ones who put out the fires and walk into the room where someone is a hot, sick mess with COVID or tuberculosis or a festering wound that reeks of decay. The ones that change our bed pans and place our IVs, the ones who teach our children and the ones who make us laugh when times are hard.

When I learned this particular sonata as a teenager in music school, my tempo was a teenpo which is to say the athletics come easily at that age. I probably zoned out during the slow movement and really sforzandoed those sforzandos. I mean I still do that, because…Beethoven. As the athleticism fades and some bit of wisdom creeps in, I delight in the hilarious moments, the yearning, shirt-tearing despair, the precocious pushing the edges of decorum right on the heels of an age of powdered wigs and pianos that were barely able to live up to the name of pianoforte. What I am trying to say is there would be no metal without Beethoven and if you don’t believe me you can Kiss my AC/DC..

I doubt Beethoven went for runs, but he did like being in nature, and did a lot of composing when out on hikes. The very first notes of this sonata are a bird call. The slow movement moves between a gentle late summer day along a brook with a nice breeze, and a sudden covering of the sun by dark clouds with peals of thunder. The third movement is a dance but under the stars at a gathering after a day working in the fields. It has a trio section that sounds to me like the town preacher walking by and shaking his fists at all the cavorting. Ultimately he gets ignored and the dancing resumes until folk fall over tired and lay back to gaze up at the moon and listen to the last movement. Enter Mr Rogers about 180 years in the future, heartening back to this rondo of a scale in triads. Rondos rendezvous with the theme over and over, playing hide and seek with it, then calling Olly Olly in come free!

When i ran in from Ghost in the Graveyard, i rejoiced at my friends all gathered in a pile, the autumn leaves crackling under us, a bed of summer’s farewell. When I run in from the redwoods cloaked in mist, the trees leave me with their blessing. When I run out of hope for this broken world, and sink to my knees in some kind of prayerful stance, i remember my parents, the ones who gave me piano lessons for my 6th birthday, the ones who held my hands in theirs, the ones who welcomed the stranger as if they too were beloved. I remember their help for others as stitched into the very core of who they were. Probably whispering in an ear right now, words of love and kindness. And Dad might also include a limerick or two.

Listen to this, if you click on the link you can watch Monk sleep through Beethoven, and Flora Mae the Fierce take it all in through her spectacular bat-dog ears. In Monks defense, he’s heard this one. A lot.

Opus 2, Number 2, for Clarence

 Early Beethoven is surprisingly tricky and should be memorized. It should be perfect. And though I started out gifted, now I am just about average, words stolen from a song by my husband, the truly gifted yet under-appreciated by the world member of the household. Go read one (or all)of his books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Atthys-J.-Gage/author/B00RYJWHGK?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Opus 2, No 2 is counterpointy, athletic, whimsical, with some moments of head-banging thrown in. Full on metal interrupts the graceful theme in the 4th movement. The first movement tries some counterpoint that is like jumping from rock to rock at full speed on the edge of a steep cliff. The third movement a lark, a dance, like a palate cleanser after the heady second movement which could be a string quartet with the cello doing this amazing pizzicato bass, and before the fourth which reintroduces the fact that Beethoven was one of the great improvisers of all time. He could just sit down and spin out a theme in a million different ways, each time more intricate or more funny or more serious or more outrageous than the last. Only to end the whole thing in a soft tip of the hat, a nod to his own genius and a laugh at the sucker who sat through it, weeping or laughing but definitely amazed.

I mean Beethoven was a bit of an arse, drinking too much, criticizing the friends who helped him most and  must’ve been the uncle from hell for his nephew. If Facebook or whatever people are using these days was around, Ludwig would’ve made cringy posts, though in the current world of meanness as a badge of honor, maybe his followers would be legion. I would like to think he would be on Strava, mapping his long country hikes where he did a lot of his thinking about music. How cool would it be to see the route where he composed Opus 2, all 3 dedicated to Haydn, and all 3 brimming with nature if you listen just right. 

Clarence, the dog, has a very recognizable bark. He is the neighborhood curmudgeon who doesn’t suffer fools, but is head over paws in love with his main person. Anyone else might want to watch for the shiv he keeps tucked in his adorable fur. Maybe Beethoven kept one tucked in his mane of hair too. I can relate to this-not the shiv part as I am a pacifist at heart, but the part about things being stored in my hair. After a romantic dinner with my gifted better half the other night, I realized I had 2 large redwood fronds in my hair the entire time. It may be he did not notice, but knowing him he just liked them being there. 

The Redwood Forest is hard not to take along with you. It is the fog and mist that fills a mind overawed, it is the seasonal dust or mud, the ferns unfurling like a heart cracking open and letting in light even if it might get burned. It is the creaking branches that could kill you in one fell swipe, reminding you each day is precious and asking you what your plans are regarding that fact. It is neon yellow slugs, wedding dress white trillium, unashamed iris purple like the old ladies who might wear it in defiance. It is the sense of a mountain lion nearby, which is a good way to describe the anxiety of parenthood, or the anxiety of playing all 32 Beethoven Sonatas in a world where Lang Lang also lives.

For about 25 minutes there is this escape into a world called opus 2, number 2, that is oddly a slightly different planet each time it is visited. Music is like that, a science fiction, science of tonality and reactions, of gravity and rate determining steps, with hypotheses and alien life forms popping in with their double sharps and crossed hands. The fictional aliens fit right into the world-building done by @LVBeethoven, which was his sci fi handle. And holy shit things just get weirder the deafer @LVB gets, until the science fiction in the late opuses is almost too mind-blowing to fathom. It is possible Opus 106 is a space opera. I’m gonna need some serious calisthenics to ride that particular flying saucer.

But I get ahead of myself. Next up is opus 2, number 3 which is one of my very favorites. While I try to get that one reasonably under my paws, please reach out if you know a canine music savant that wants to run around, snooze, chew a bone, fart or bark madly while I play it for them.

For today, thank you King Clarence, for giving 25 minutes of your one precious life, and for letting your person film the video. Incidentally, she was specifically instructed not to focus on my big ass, and if you make it to the end of the video, I am pretty sure she decided to defy me and do an actual close up of my derrière. For what it’s worth, I imagine Beethoven liked a good butt joke, though maybe not quite as much as Mozart did.

If you would like to listen, and meet Clarence, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvLFNY4WqMs

Opus 2, Number 1, for Monk

 My dogs, through the years, were often runners. My Reverend father named the childhood dog the Rabelaisianesque “Brandy”, make of that what you will. Brandy never needed a leash, always at one’s side. He equally enjoyed parental walks, cross-country running obsessed trots and sprints alongside my skateboarding brother. As he aged, sometimes I’d notice he wasn’t at my side and instead had joined an old jogger neighbor some ways behind me. I mean she was probably at least 45 years old. In our small home he laid near the piano when I played (probably used to my siblings loudly begging me to stop). Maybe he too was begging me to stop. 

But I think all dogs appreciate music. Zoe, a neurodivergent, stunted golden doodle, actively sought out music. I had impulsively picked her out from a breeder in Washington state who had their puppies listen to classical music. When I finished reading to the kids at bedtime she would trot click click click down the hall and sit at my feet gazing up while I sang „Müde bin Ich“ and “ You are my Sunshine”. She preferred music no later than Brahms. When anything in the 1900’s started up on the piano, and God forbid the 21st century, she click click clicked upstairs in a huff. But she also frantically did what one friend called the “breast stroke” on leash to try to dine on horse shit. So I am not sure she gets the last say on modern music.

Buster the border collie had no opinion about the piano but was completely devoted to me, he wore his black and white tux to every practice session. He had class.

Shasta really didn’t like me very much and the piano was just another confusing part of the universe she was thrown into when we brought her in after her owner had died, near the end of her life. Which turned out to be 4 years later. By the end she tolerated me and really that’s all I can ask of anyone.

Moving into the jazz era. Miles took over Buster’s fierce devotion immediately upon his Christmas Day death, a Christmas Day spent in a hospital shift after laying on the floor hugging old Buster all night. As I lay weeping later, Miles tucked right up next to me and sort of just stayed there for the next 10 years. When Our favorite violinist or a string quartet came to join me for music adventures, Miles would quietly stand in the middle of the group just being a witness, like someone quietly swaying in church during an especially fiery sermon. Though if the beach had not been visited before a long music session, he would head-butt my hands off the keyboard. When I met him as a puppy he seemed the most chill of the litter and I thought he was cool jazz. He went through several phases though, not unlike his namesake. He always knew how to use silence, and that it was at least as important as the woof woofing.

Monk has an old soul, a goofball presence, and never fears mistakes. At 9 months he already outweighs Miles (may he rest in peace). He is a lab so EVERYTHING IS AMAZING AND MIGHT ALSO BE GOOD TO CHEW ON. Somehow he knew chewing on the Steinway was the antithesis of joy. As he matures I believe he finds chewing on the tasty chords that fly through the air quite satisfying. He told me once that there are no wrong notes on the piano. Or maybe that was his namesake who said that but either way, I am in.

I wanted to be a concert pianist who wore tails. I decided that when listening in the dark to the LP of Horowitz playing the Moonlight Sonata when I was 5. We didn’t even have a piano, but THAT was my future.

When my cervical spinal cord was all messed up in 2023 I couldn’t quite walk in a straight line. Then I couldn’t pick up a jigsaw puzzle piece. Then I couldn’t play a scale. Which finally made me stop gaslighting myself and seek medical care. Thankfully it was mechanical and a neurosurgeon just fixed that thing. The dexterity hasn’t quite returned but since there are no wrong notes on the piano I don’t sweat it too hard.

I am so grateful to be able to play. And here is a secret: I love Beethoven. It’s beyond reason but probably there is some neurohormonal attachment from that 5 year old girl sitting under headphones with Horowitz at the helm of an 88 key mind-blower. Before my spine surgery, I played through all 32 Beethoven sonatas in a few days. It occurred to me that the very slight possibility that something could go wrong could leave me unable to play at all. Over the years, from music school days as a teenager to the years not playing much at all during medical training to a reengagement with grace to my diminished stature as a musician, I have always come back to LVB. 

I haven’t ever been a concert pianist who played in tails. But I like to make others wag their tails. And in however long I have left on this spinning rock, I am finally going to learn all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas reasonably well enough. In fact well enough to entertain the purest of all critics, the best boys and girls in the universe, the chewers of the bones of the repertoire and the inhabitants of a world where open hearts is just wagnificent.

Thus begins the Beethoven Project. If you know a dog needing some Beethoven, give me a holler. The first one though is for my best little brother, my current zen master and the loudest snorer in the universe.

If you’d like to watch Monk watching the first Beethoven Project performance, click below!

Let’s start at the start, little Monk. 

https://youtu.be/DndQqkktMl8?feature=shared

Tree Magic

 While running through the old growth redwoods today, the older adult redwoods, the elders, the sages, sensei masters, maestros of the girth of a Mahler symphony, while running among them on the paved path inserted by people in order to allow us to see and be among the trees, I thought about community. I touched the bark and moss and burls as I loped past, in gratitude and like all of my species, in an attempt to take with me some of the mystery, the tree magic.

16 months ago, I was not sure I would ever run again. Myelopathy had me walking askew and unable to do the things that come easily enough to me, like playing piano or lifting a puzzle piece with my fingers. Turning pages of a book and walking in a straight line required a connection no longer being made. All my skepticism about modern medicine had to take a hike for the relinquishing of control to an anesthesiologist and neurosurgeon, all standing in a row with nurses when I entered the operating theater. 

Good fortune, skilled and attentive physicians and good old fashioned fear of what was happening to me spurred me to take the leap and have led me to be a good deal better than I was. Including, today, running the marathon again.

I heard someone around mile 18 say “did she just touch that tree?” But around mile 10 when I did a little leap up to tap Sir Redwood, someone else shouted “Yeah! Tree magic!” Either way I might be weird but besides the tree magic the people magic has me thinking that our world is on the okay side of disaster. While we are seemingly surrounded on all sides by rage, the hundreds out running today had smiles and good wishes. A 3 year old handed me a cup of water with bright eyes gazing upwards and a huge smile. James Washington and a multitude of volunteers fed, watered, herded and cheered on the racers. 

I reached out to some friends before the race to help me build a playlist. Earth, Wind & Fire made a couple of appearances. David Bowie, AC/DC, Jenny Scheinmann, John Coltrane, Jon Batiste, Beyoncé, and of the 3.5 hours of music, there was only one duplicate (Batiste-Freedom), and only one that I picked myself (Boom Boom Pow). One of my favorites was Femininomenon. Right at the half was Mountolive and of course, Journey was there, Not stopping believing just like they didn’t let us stop believing when we boarded the bus to a high school cross country meet at 6am on an autumn Wisconsin morning in the 1980’s.

So What, you say? And no, Miles Davis did not get on this list, but I will make sure he is represented next time. A friends’ playlist through bone conduction headphones while doing something you aren’t sure you can actually do is a huge gift of community. I could identify who had picked what song, and Monica, did you hear me laugh when East River came on? 

On Friday an angry patient yelled and swore at me. But I still believe in community. Our local university campus is closed after demonstrations, but I still believe in community. My middle child is in prison but we talk almost every day and I still believe in community. We do not have to navigate alone the crazy fact of being alive in this broken world (thank you Mary Oliver). Michelle, who ran (SMOKING FAST) the half marathon today hung around to see me finish and make sure my weak, donut ass got safely into my car with my incredibly thoughtful husband after the race. 

Regarding donuts, I binged on them at work on Friday. See above re angry patient. Coping mechanisms are a work in progress, likely till the day I die. And when that day comes, I know the community will turn their hearts to my family and friends, and will make sure my patients are cared for. I don’t plan on a celestial discharge anytime soon, but, again with the Mary Oliver: one precious life can zip by faster than Yuja Wang can play a Chopin Etude!

We do not have to be alone. Just ask the Redwood trees who have all sorts of interesting chats over intertwined roots plugged into the Mycorrhizal network. Chats that maybe started 300 years ago. Tree magic.