text:
Bass Lion Publishing
John Goldsby
Robin Meloy Goldsby
Notes and Words
Solo Piano Sheet Music
Piano Girl Podcast
Married to the Bass
September 29, 2019 by Robin
Excerpt from Piano Girl: A Memoir
Courtesy of Backbeat Books
©2006 Robin Meloy Goldsby
photo by Julia Goldsby
Okay, Ladies, listen up. Bass players make great husbands. There is no scientific data to support my claim. But having worked my way through the rhythm section, the technicians, and a handful of brass, reed, and string players, I'm a qualified judge.
First, consider this. A man who plays an upright bass is strong. He lugs the instrument around, carries it up steps, slides it in and out of cars, and maneuvers it through large crowds of people. If you marry a bass player you'll be getting a physically fit husband. Okay, there is the occasional back problem. This crops up two or three times a year—usually when you want him to move your grandmother's walnut armoire or need him to stand on a ladder and drill a hole in the ceiling. But you can cope with such minor inconveniences by calling a muscular clarinet player who is handy with a power drill. Good luck finding one. Here's the thing: When your bass player is pain-free, he's as strong as a bull. He has to be in order to make the gig. And he might even throw you over his shoulder and carry you over the threshold every so often, just because he can.
Next, ponder the shape of the upright bass. It's shaped like a woman. A bass player knows about bumps and curves—he even likes them. He has dedicated his life to coaxing beautiful music out of voluptuous contours. He'll do the same for you. Just don't marry a stick-bass player, unless you look like Kate Moss or intend to spend the rest of your life eating lettuce.
Examine the bass player's hands, especially when he's playing a particularly fast passage. Now imagine what those fingers can do to you. Enough said.
A great bassist is an ensemble player, a team member who executes, with confidence, a vital role in any band with the strength of his groove, the steadiness of his rhythm, and the imaginative logic of his harmonic lines. This doesn't just apply to the bassist's music. It also applies to his outlook on life. A bass-player husband will be loyal, true, and interesting, and will help you emerge from life's challenges looking and sounding better than you ever imagined. If you're in a bad mood, don't worry. He'll change keys. On the other hand, if you marry a pianist, he'll try and arrange everything and then tell you what your disposition should be. If you marry a guitarist, he'll try to get ahead of you by analyzing your temperament in double-time. If you marry a drummer, it won't matter what kind of mood you're in because he'll just forge ahead with his own thing. A bass player follows along, supports you, and makes you think that everything is okay, even when the world is crashing down around you.
There are some minor drawbacks. You need to have a house with empty corners, especially if your husband owns more than one upright bass. I know, you have that newly reupholstered Louis XV chair that would look fabulous in the corner by the window. Forget it—that's where the bass has to go. You can come to terms with these trivial decorating disappointments by reflecting on the sculpture-like quality of the instrument. Even when it's silent, it's a work of art.
If you have children—and you will because bass players make great fathers—your most frequently uttered phrase will be "WATCH THE BASS!" You will learn how to interject this phrase into every conversation you have with your children. For instance: "Hello, sweetie, watch the bass, did you have a nice day at kindergarten? We're having rice and broccoli for lunch, watch the bass, do you want milk or water to drink?"
You will be doomed to a life of station wagons, minivans, and SUVs. You might harbor a secret fantasy of zooming around town in a Mazda MX5 convertible, but this will never happen unless you go through a big messy divorce, give your bass-player husband custody of the children, and marry a violinist, which would be no fun at all. Better to accept the hatchback as an integral part of your existence and get on with it.
Any trip you make with your family and the bass will be a pageant that requires detailed organization and nerves of steel. In addition to your two children (one of whom probably wants to be a drummer—heaven help you), you will commence your journey with suitcases, bass, bass trunk, backpacks, amp, car seats, strollers, and diaper bag. Your husband, weighted down with an enormous backpack and a bass trunk the size of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, will leave you to deal with everything else. As you try to walk inconspicuously through the airport terminal, people will point and stare.
First Spectator: "They look the Slovenian Traveling Circus!"
Second Spectator: "Hey buddy, you should have played the flute!"
Things like that.
You will learn how to say ha, ha, ha, stick your nose in the air, and pretend that you are traveling with a big star, which of course he is, to you.
Your bass-player husband will know the hip chord changes to just about every song ever written in the history of music. This is a good thing. Just don't ask him to sing the melody. He might be able to play the melody, but he won't sing it—he'll sing the bass line. And, if you happen to play the piano, as I do, don't expect him to just sit there silently and appreciate what you are playing without making a few suggestions for better changes and voicings. He'll never give up on trying to improve your playing. But that's why you married him in the first place. He accepts what you do, but he pushes you to do it better.
If you marry the bass player, you marry the bass. Buy one, get one free. Your husband will be passionate about his music, which will grant you the freedom to be passionate about the things you do. You might not worship the bass as much as he does, but you'll love the bass player more every day.
Robin Meloy Goldsby is a Steinway Artist. She is the author of Piano Girl; Waltz of the Asparagus People: The Further Adventures of Piano Girl; Rhythm: A Novel. New: Manhattan Road Trip, a collection of short stories about (what else?) musicians. Go here to buy Manhattan Road Trip.
Robin's music is available on all streaming platforms. If you're a Spotify fan, go here to listen. NEW! Listen to the Piano Girl Podcast. Stories, music, fun. Play the piano? Check out Robin's solo piano sheet music here.
Personal note from RMG: Here's a gorgeous playlist featuring my favorite "gentle music" players, including Ludovico Einaudi, Robin Spielberg, Christine Brown, Yiruma, Liz Story, et moi. I'm really proud of this playlist and hope it will bring you peace and joy. Right now would be a good time to listen. Twenty-three hours of solo piano! Click here to listen on Spotify or Apple Music.
September 4, 2019 by Robin
Mother-son road trip. It's mid-summer and I'm on a jam-packed Condor Airlines flight, headed to Pittsburgh (my hometown) with my twenty-six-year old son. Just when I thought my days of traveling with kids had come to a grinding halt, here I am, in Economy Premium—the poor woman's business class—sipping champagne from a paper cup (sneaked to us by a lovely flight attendant who's a fan of my music) and toasting the promise of a perfect holiday.
Summer fun! Once again, we have convinced ourselves that it's a wise idea to stuff our long bodies into a gravity-defying metal tube, breathe the spit-back air of three hundred tired passengers, and fly into the flailing arms of a country that seems more akin to the dream of home, less like the real deal.
"Isn't a condor a type of vulture?" says Curtis.
"Don't ask me," I say. "My knowledge of vultures is limited to Tarzan movies and one ill-fated trip on a golf cart in the Bahamas; the cart got stuck on a rock and we were surrounded by vultures that turned out to be wild turkeys. But they looked like vultures. Not pretty. Thought I was gonna get my eyes pecked out."
"Condor, the Vulture of Airlines. Imagine the marketing guy who decided to name an airline after a bird of prey." says Curtis. "He had one job."
"Cheers," I say. "Look at this. Enough legroom!" Curtis is six feet, six inches tall. He needs a lot of legroom.
"It's a miracle," he says. "Score one for the vultures."
Our friendly music fan/flight attendant slips some Belgian chocolate to us from Business Class. We receive extra blankets, extra pillows, extra champagne and a Condor swag bag. I'm a little concerned we might cause an uprising in Economy Premium (who's the bitch in row six with the free truffles?), but as my dad says, "if you've got the cards, play 'em."
1994, baby Curtis, age18 months
Twenty-five years ago, I flew across the Atlantic with my son for the first time. We were moving to Germany to begin a new life. Full of nervous energy, apprehension, and an all-American spirit of adventure, I boarded the plane in Pittsburgh with an eighteen-month-old toddler, a diaper bag, and a purse that contained exactly one Chanel lipstick, a copy of Peter Rabbit, nine matchbox cars, and Scruffy the stuffed bear. In 1994 non-passengers could still walk to the gate of the airplane to wave goodbye to their loved ones. My dad—known as "Pap" to his grandchildren—sweet-talked a flight attendant into letting him accompany us onto the plane so he could spend more time with Curtis, the world's tallest toddler, and help us get settled onboard. I always made it a point to buy a ticket for the baby—he might have been young enough to share my seat for free, but he was way too lanky and active for the lap option.
Dad hugged us both, then said to Curtis:
"If you need anything, anything at all, remember—don't call me!"
Curtis laughed, opened a package of crackers, and yelled, "Pap!"
"That's right," my dad said. "I'm your Pap."
Curtis and I had stayed with my parents for a month while John—my hard-working bass-player husband—recorded a couple of albums in New York City and supervised the movers packing up our apartment. Curtis and I were scheduled to fly from Pittsburgh to JFK airport, meet John, and board the plane for Germany.
I had flown out of JFK a hundred times but forgot that each airline had its own terminal. I assumed John would enthusiastically meet us at the gate and help me get the stroller, the baby, and the luggage to the next flight. Curtis and I disembarked, but John wasn't there. We didn't have cell phones back then, so I had no way to reach him. Our bags were not checked through to Germany, so I needed to collect them and find my way to the Lufthansa terminal.
We stood curbside for twenty minutes, waiting, waiting, waiting for John. I had been jilted before, but didn't expect to be stood up by my husband on the very day we were moving to a foreign country.
"What should we do?" I asked Curtis, who, at the age of one was already exhibiting managerial skills. "Where's your daddy?"
"Call Pap!" he said.
"Gotta take the bus, lady," said the man at the info counter. "The Terminal Express—it's the fastest way to get from here to there."
Terminal Express. Is there any two-word combination in the English language that I dread more? With the help of a kind, muscle-bound stranger, I piled our luggage and stroller on the Terminal Express, a jalopy with peeling paint, no seats, and a snarly, stout man at the wheel. We drove around in potholed circles for fifteen minutes until we arrived at Lufthansa.
"Hurry up, lady," the driver shouted as I struggled to drag my belongings and the baby down the steps of the bus. "We ain't got all day."
"Call Pap!" Curtis shouted. Aside from throwing a cracker at the Terminal Express driver, my son was surprisingly good-natured about the way our day was proceeding. He had missed his afternoon nap and it was now early evening—the time when toddlers are most likely to exhibit honey badger traits. I was feeling a little testy, myself.
I spotted John pacing in the Lufthansa terminal, looking at his watch.
"Daddy!" yelled Curtis.
"Where have you been?" John said to me. "I've been waiting here for an hour."
"We were waiting at the US Air terminal for you. We had to take the Terminal Express. With all this stuff. I thought you would meet us when we got off the first flight."
"Yeah, but we're flying out from this terminal Why would I meet you there?"
"I have the baby!"
"I have the bass!"
"Call Pap!" said Curtis.
I spied the bass—in its refrigerator-sized fiberglass case—hulking in the corner, waiting to be carted off to the plane. John had a point; the case was huge; it would not have fared well on the Terminal Express.
Baby, bass, ready, steady, go.
"We're checked in," he said. "But the woman at the counter said we don't need a seat for the baby. He's under two and the flight is not full. We'll have plenty of room."
"What? You didn't buy the seat for the baby? We always buy a seat for the baby. Plus, we're not even paying for this flight; it's not like it's costing us anything."
"Relax. Why should the employer spend more money than necessary? It's business class—lots of room. We'll be fine. The check-in clerk said there was an empty seat next to us."
I did not trust this. Not one bit. The waiting area looked like we were about to fight for the last chopper out of Saigon.
"Book!" yelled Curtis. I read the Tale of Peter Rabbit to him for the 15thtime that day. He was very suspicious of Mr. McGregor.
We boarded, and the plane was completely full. Obviously, the Lufthansa clerk had been anxious to sell our seat to a disgruntled business-class passenger.
Curtis, for the first time in his life, would be a lap baby, another dreaded two-word combination, right up there with terminal bus.
If you're a career musician, chances are you've flown around the world a few times. You've logged miles you'll never be allowed to use; you've pigged out on excessively salted food, sipped canned tomato juice, and guzzled wine even though you swore you would avoid alcohol while in the air. You've probably experienced lost suitcases, damaged instruments, and the stomach-drop thud of realizing you've left your Kindle in the seat pocket. You may well have become adept at dealing with jet lag, flooded toilet facilities, dry-air induced nosebleeds, digestive disorders, missed flights, and overly-chatty borderline-perv neighbors who fall asleep and drool on your shoulder. It's part of the devil's deal a musician makes when she signs up to travel the world.
These things do not, however, prepare you for flying with a toddler.
Back to our story.
In 1994, a nine-hour flight with a non-sleeping lap baby meant 540 minutes of close-quartered Romper Room. In-seat entertainment systems and noise cancelling headphones were five years in the future. Unless I wanted to crane my child's neck so he could watch an airplane-censored version of Natural Born Killers on the Business Class shared movie screen, there was little to do than read him repeated versions of Peter Rabbit and hope that he didn't take out the eyeball of a business class passenger by flinging Matchbox cars across the aisle. We walked a lot, possibly fifty laps of the plane. Up, down. Up, down.
Note: The active toddler deemed adorable by other passengers at the beginning of a nine-hour journey loses his appeal about two hours in, even if he is wearing a very cute sailor hat and carrying Scruffy the bear.
"When's our little friend going to sleep?" asked a stressed flight attendant.
"Call Pap!" shouted Curtis.
Maybe there was hidden sugar in his crackers. Maybe there was speed in the airplane food. The kid was cranked and ready for action.
By the time we flew over Greenland we were all starting to crack. The business class passengers had paid for a seat that promised a tranquil flying experience. Instead, they were ducking flung toys and brushing cracker crumbs off their shoulders.
"GET OFF MY PROPERTY!" shouted Mr. McGregor.
I was booted from business class and perp-walked, with my son and Scruffy the bear, to sit in a flight attendant's jump-seat, back by the toilet.
"I'm so sorry," John said when he came back to check on us. "Guess we should have kept that extra seat."
I glared at him, strapped myself in, vowed to stay calm, ordered another Bloody Mary, and cracked open the Peter Rabbit book. I was really starting to hate that frigging rabbit.
One more time, with feeling.
My dear, squirmimg child never slept that night—not one wink. The nine-hour flight lasted approximately three weeks. By the time we retrieved our bags, he was a whack-a-toddler version of Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear, running in loops and popping up everywhere I looked. At one point he jumped on the luggage belt, intent on discovering what was hidden behind the rubber fringe. Maybe he thought Mr. McGregor was back there.
We collected our bags, the bass, the baby, and Scruffy the bear—we were now in full Slovenian traveling circus mode—and wheeled ourselves into the reception area where two drivers were waiting for us.
One of the drivers pointed at the fiberglass bass trunk and said: "What's that supposed to be?"
We climbed into a Mercedes van and sped into Germany's dawn.
"Please," I said to our driver. "Please slow down."
"Fast!" yelled Curtis. "Go fast!"
Bing, bang, boom. The night that lasted three weeks transitioned seamlessly into two and a half decades that flew by in double time, triple time, tempo tantrum. And here I am with my son again, on the long-haul trip from Frankfurt to Pittsburgh—sipping champagne in a paper cup and waxing nostalgic about that first flight, the one that delivered us to a new life in a new land.
John and I have raised two children in Europe, benefitted from excellent health care, and reaped the rewards of the education system available to Germany's residents. Curtis is now twenty-six, and his fabulous sister, Julia (who has always been very good at sleeping on planes) is twenty-three. John and I have been privileged to create rewarding careers for ourselves in a country that respects the arts. We didn't know any of this in 1994 when we packed up our lives and leapt across the pond. We were young, ready for a change, and 100 percent sure that love would see us through. It has, and it will.
And now there's this on the airplane: After dinner, our favorite flight attendant halts the inflight entertainment. In German she says: "Condor Airlines is pleased to welcome renowned pianist Robin Meloy Goldsby onboard today's flight to Pittsburgh . . ." She speaks about my albums, my streaming platforms, and highlights of my career. It's extremely flattering—this has never happened to me before—but I'm a little concerned about a passenger revolt. It's one thing for her to give us free truffles, another to interrupt their enjoyment of Mary Poppins Returns or the entire fourth season of Friends.
What a difference a couple of decades can make. The first time I flew this route with my son we almost ended up in airport jail for disturbing the peace. This time, they're glad we're onboard.
"Seriously?" Curtis says. "They're announcing you on the plane?"
Just when we think her speech is over, the flight attendant begins again, this time in English. We slink down in our seats to avoid the judgmental stares of our fellow passengers, even though a small part of me wants to jump up and shout, "Hey! I'm the piano player! She's talking about me!"
Then, at the end, she says this: "Robin lives in Germany, but today, she's headed home. To Pittsburgh."
My heart swells. Happiness, pride, relief, confusion—I don't know what.
We land, thank the flight attendant for her kindness, and go through immigration. I look at my strong adult son and recall the hot-mess mama drama of the day we left Pittsburgh—exactly twenty-five years ago this month—and get a little choked up.
Truth be told, I kind of miss Scruffy the bear.
"We should call Pap," Curtis says as he pulls my heavy suitcase off the belt. "I want to let him know I'm in town."
Baubles, Bangles, and Queens
June 12, 2019 by Robin
Instagram @ageofaquaria
My daughter, Julia, and I climb the staircase to the Cologne Musical Tent, a temporary structure on the Rhine that has become a semi-permanent part of the skyline.
We're headed to Werq the World, a live show featuring top performers from Ru Paul's Drag Race. Julia has convinced me to buy tickets for tonight's shindig.
I'm in my seventh decade of life, so this is hardly my first drag queen rodeo. Some of my earliest gypsy-in-my-soul performances on the professional stage—back in the late seventies—included playing the piano, singing, and dancing in an old-fashioned Burlesque show that featured a couple of queens. First lesson learned: Never ever stand next to anyone, male or female, who is blonder or thinner. Second lesson learned: Always make friends with the drag queen—she'll keep you laughing, teach you how to touch up your roots, and let you cry your broken heart out on the padded shoulder of her Joan Crawford suit jacket.
We didn't say "you go, girl" back then. We said, "work your show."
In 1982 I worked on a horror film outside of Baltimore (House on Sorority Row). We were in production at the same time as Barry Levinson's Diner and John Water's Polyester—a trifecta of cult films in three different genres. We visited each other's sets and a couple of times, I had lunch with Divine. I found myself wishing she had been cast in our chop up the college girls classic—she would have made a great sorority house mother. Divine was divine.
During my years in Manhattan, while playing piano at the Grand Hyatt, I once marveled at "Night of a Thousand Queens," an event that attracted hundreds of chiseled men in drop-dead gorgeous evening gowns. Upswept hair, spackled faces, butts and fake boobs cranked to stunning heights! Baubles, bangles, and queens! On my break from the piano lounge, I sat in the granite lobby pit on a brown pleather sofa and gaped at the razzle-dazzle parade. In my drag-wannabe Piano Girl high heels and black-tulle gold-spangled Betsey Johnson skirt, I envied their heat-seeking confidence and queenly defiance. Like a pack of fierce, stiletto-footed wolverines, they stalked the lobby and left a trail of undulating optimism in their collective path. Somehow, these guys had survived the eighties. Everyone I knew during that dark decade in Manhattan had lost friends to AIDS. The Hyatt horde of queens turned the lights back on, at least for a few hours. Rage turned inside out—dressed to the nines and ready to fight back.
So here I am tonight, three decades later, prepared for another shimmer-shine extravaganza. Julia and I have opted to wear simple black dresses with tasteful accessories. No bling for us. I learned my lesson years ago—no matter how many leopard-print accessories or junk jewelry bracelets you own, you can't upstage a queen on a mission. Her false eyelashes will always be longer, fluffier, and tinted to the perfect shade of midnight; her iridescent eyeshadow will have more glitter than yours. The drag queen colors the world with a different, more vibrant box of crayons.
The press page blurb for Werq the World says this: "Over-the-top production numbers that will leave fans gagging." Tonight we're scheduled to see Aquaria, Asia O'Hara, Detox, Kameron Michaels, Kim Chi, Monét X Change, Naomi Smalls, and (my favorite name) Violet Chachki. The queens, led by Drag Race den mother and jury member Michelle Visage, will attempt to rescue the galaxy from who knows what. The galaxy needs a lot of help these days.
As we head inside, I wonder if we're in the right place. The squeaky-faced youngsters around me look like they're headed to a church picnic or next week's performance of Bodyguard: The Musical. But we turn a corner and bam! An Amazon queen—in a blond wig and head to toe silver sequins—poses for photos with awe-struck teenagers.
"Yep," says Julia. "This is the right place. Just wait until you see Asia O'Hara and Kim Chi."
"Kim Chi?" I say. "Like the Korean pickled cabbage?"
"Exactly. She is spicy."
We hand our tickets to a man in a blue coat and enter the theater. The music thumps and bumps so loudly I can feel it jack-jack-jackhammer my heart. Is this necessary? Too much bass in the place. Scary. I put my hands over my ears.
"Mom," yells Julia. "This is way too loud for you. Wait here and I will go the lobby and get you earplugs."
"What?" I say. "Did you say earplugs?" I wish I had brought my noise cancelling headphones, but then I would have looked like an oversized, menopausal toddler dragged to a rock concert by her parents.
The German word for earplugs is Ohrstöpsel, right up there with Dudelsack (bagpipe) and Kaiserschnitt(c-section) on my personal list of great translations. I wonder where Julia will find Ohrstöpsel in the lobby, but she returns with a small sealed package.
"They have to have them at music events. I think it's a law," she says.
The foam plugs help. Now that I'm no longer worried about drag-show-induced deafness, I'm free to look around at the other audience members. Along with the churchy-looking youth groups in pressed, pastel oxford-cloth shirts, there are stout boys with artsy tattoos and rainbow hair, men with beards wearing suit jackets with skirts (the Billy Porter influence has hit Germany), straight couples in nuances of navy, and young women (I think) with bouffant hairdos and killer waistlines. As far as I can tell, we're the only mother-daughter team in attendance. I am easily thirty years older than everyone else around me. Once again, I have clearly entered Great Aunt Edna territory. Old Edna goes to the drag show. Aside from the VOLUME, it's nothing Edna hasn't seen (or heard) before.
But maybe it is.
The curtain goes up. The audience gasps. The queens enter, one at a time, wearing space capes (remember the galaxy theme), that, when stripped off, reveal a rainbow of spectacular costumes. Even though I know these ensembles are the work of a crazed costume designer toting an oversized glue gun on each hip, from a distance they look lavish.
The queens lip-sync, prance, look fabulous, prance some more (there's a lot of prancing in this show) and are occasionally joined onstage by real dancers. Kim Chi does one number with four acrobats underneath her skirt. Aquaria, with turquoise hair, hangs upside-down from a rope. Asia—a Donna Summer clone—works hard for her money. The audience goes nuts. I see people weeping with joy. Or maybe it's relief. These queens—silly, slutty, and over-the-top—give us permission to feel good about how we present ourselves to the world. Black pantsuit or lavender sequined ball gown—it's all good.
In the midst of all this fake-ness, the air hangs thick with authenticity.
"See Mom? I told you. These queens have the power to change the world. They inspire tolerance. We need more of that, right?"
I wonder what would have happened if I had seen this show in the seventh grade, when I was bullied by a gang of nasty girls for playing Bach on the piano and wearing the wrong outfit (plaid skirt with fabulous matching green shoes). Tonight's message might have made it easier for me to sashay away from those tyrants with my dignity intact. Instead, I got dragged down the steps by my hair and kicked in the ribs. And then I stopped wearing plaid skirts.
In the midst of all the galaxy saving, trapeze work, and satin cape waving, Michelle Visage, perhaps the only person in the theater close to my age, walks center stage, screams, "Hello, bitches!" and proceeds to talk about having her breast implants removed—she had had the "enhancement" in her early twenties because she felt she needed big boobs to play the Hollywood game. Years later, after dealing with serious illness caused by the implants, she had them yanked out. Breast in Peace. Michelle speaks pointedly about never allowing society to dictate the way we look. She talks about body image, eating disorders, and the difficulty of raising teenagers in a culture obsessed with standardized perfection. It's a missive we don't hear often enough and certainly not one I anticipated at a drag show.
I am blown away by the love in the hall. By the time the show is over, I'm transformed, not by the blow-your-balls-off bass-lines, the Cher-on-steroids costumes, or the razor-sharp highlighted cheekbones—but by the subtle way the queens have taken an edgy, brash, in-your-face drag show and turned it into a gentle lesson in how we can live better, more authentic lives.
Werq your show. Save the galaxy with compassion. Love is love. Be yourself. As Ru Paul would say: "Don't fuck it up."
New piano album: Home and Away, Goldsby's latest solo piano album, directly from the artist. Robin's music is available on all streaming platforms. If you're a Spotify fan, go here to listen.
Play the piano? Check out Robin's solo piano sheet music here.
May 7, 2019 by Robin
In the classic children's book Love You Forever, Robert Munsch and illustrator Sheila McGraw manage—with a few powerful stanzas and heart-wrenching drawings—to get to the obvious, essential core of parenthood. Circle of life, cradle to grave—all that. I used to read this story to my kids at bed time. Not once did I finish the last page without bursting into tears.
It's September 20th, 2014. I have two big events today, neither of which I anticipate with glee. This morning, I'm driving our twenty-year-old son, who has been educated in Germany, to the Düsseldorf airport. He's headed to California for a senior-year university exchange semester at UC Riverside. Later, after I drop him off and drive back home, I must shift gears, spackle my face, and drive two hours to play a concert in a chapel at a funeral home. Not a memorial service, but an actual concert. Who plays a concert at a funeral home?
My husband, John the Bassist, is out of town on a tour, so, as often happens, I'm flying solo on the airport drop-off.
It's an hour to Düsseldorf airport, my least favorite of the sleek German transportation hubs, mainly because the shiny granite floor—so gleaming it seems to undulate under my feet—makes me dizzy and slightly nauseated. I'm at this airport often. This past summer, I made sixteen trips to drop off and fetch family members.
With the German university system—free, quality education, no hoopla—we've missed out on the American "move your kid into a college dorm" rite of passage. I feel a little bad that I'm not going with our boy to help him settle into his first "student residence," but it's too expensive for me to fly with him, plus he has travelled alone to other education programs in Europe, South Africa, and Israel, so it's not like he needs me to go along and organize his sock drawer. Even though he'll be gone for four months, he's traveling with one suitcase and a carry-on. My son, the world's tallest minimalist.
I feel the blues coming on. Every time he leaves, I know he is one step closer to gone for good. We park the car, get his bag checked in, and grab a chalky imitation-coffee beverage at Starbucks.
I'm not good at goodbyes, but I hover stoically at a distance and hold it together as he ambles to the security gate. I wonder if this ever gets easier. Right before he passes through the glass door, he turns around and yells in his booming baritone man-boy voice, "Love you forever, Mom!"
Whenever our son leaves home for an extended period of time, I think back to the day he was born, in December 1992. After a very long pregnancy—forty-two weeks, plus—I finally went into labor. I had stopped playing gigs at thirty-nine weeks, mainly because I had fallen on a slippery street (on my way to a piano job) and broken my arm at the elbow. I was a mess. My shoes didn't fit, my one dress looked pretty shabby, and my husband had to give me baths to avoid getting my cast wet. So much for dignity; I had morphed into a barefoot, pregnant, one-armed Piano Girl.
On the day of the Big Event, my water broke at nine in the morning. Shortly thereafter, labor pains started. My hospital bag had been packed for weeks.
"Are you sure?" said John. "This could be another pishap." A few weeks prior, I had sneezed while waiting in line at a liquor store (not a good look for a pregnant gal), wet my pants, and assumed the baby was on the way. Wrong.
"Real deal," I said. "Let's go."
"Wait," said John. "I need my snacks." We had taken pre-natal classes and the teacher told us to make sure we packed snacks for the coach.
"Really?" I said. "I'm in labor and you're making peanut butter sandwiches?"
"Could be a long day. Gotta keep up my strength."
The labor pains were kind of weak, so I sat on the couch and checked my watch while the coach packed his damn snack bag. Off to the doctor. By the time we arrived at her office, the pains had stopped.
"This baby is never coming," I told her.
"Oh yes, he is," she said. "One way or another. I'll meet you at the hospital later today."
We checked into NYU Medical Center and a technician hooked up an IV to administer a labor-inducing drug. Opposite world at its finest; most of the time we take drugs to avoid pain—this time we were hoping to bring it on. The orders were clear: No food, no water, no walking, no fun. The labor pains were twenty minutes apart.
"Now, look," said the nurse to John. "We need to measure your wife's urine output. This is your job. You get the bedpan under her whenever she needs it and place it on the table when she is finished. Then we can measure the fluid."
"Excuse me?" I said. "I never, ever do toilet things in front of my husband. We have a closed-door policy in the bathroom."
"Well, get over it," the nurse said. "He's gonna see a lot worse than urine by the time this day is over."
"It's fine, Robin," said John. He was using his calm voice, the one that indicated he wasn't feeling very calm at all.
"Okay, okay." I said. The nurses must have a long list of silly tasks to keep husbands occupied. Maybe this was one of them. Urine collector. Perhaps an appropriate way to start one's fathering career.
An hour passed. No action on the labor front in spite of the drugs. I had to tinkle. "Sorry about this," I said to John, "but get that bedpan."
"Bedpan. Bedpan. Where's the bedpan?" He searched. I squirmed on the edge of the bed.
"Hurry up," I said.
"It must be here somewhere."
"We're gonna have another pishap."
"You had one job."
"Here it is!" he said, shoving a very small kidney shaped dish under my bottom. I'd seen intermezzo sorbet bowls that were bigger.
"Really?" I said. "That's like a tea cup. I really have to go. A lot."
"Not to worry. I found a whole stack of these things."
Well. I filled up six of those little dishes, with John, like an expert plate spinner, transferring one after the other to the table.
Nobody had mentioned the balancing of pee-pee receptacles in prenatal class.
John counted his caddies of urine. "Look at that," he said with pride. "Didn't spill a drop."
The nurse entered the room, stopped and stared at the urine buffet, and said, "What the hell is that?"
"I collected the urine," said John, with a broad sweep of his arm. "Here are the bedpans."
It takes a lot to make an overworked nurse in a labor and delivery-ward laugh, but laugh she did. "Those things aren't bedpans. They are emesis basins. You know, in case someone has to spit."
"But where are the bed pans?" asked John.
"Under the bed," she said.
It's a good thing the coach brought snacks because we spent a solid twenty-eight hours in that room, waiting for something, anything to happen. The doctor showed up and cranked the meds—enough to cause labor pains every five minutes, but evidently not enough coax the baby out of his perfectly nice hiding place.
Every so often a nurse/opera singer (only in New York) would come into our room and sing a few bars of a Madame Butterfly aria for me. Once, she brought in a swaddled baby and said: "Look, darlin.' At the end of all this, you're going to get one of these beautiful creatures."
"Can I take that one?" I said. "And bail on the rest of this delivery thing?"
The anesthesiologist—my hero—looked like the neighborhood drug dealer, complete with tinted glasses, hipster hair, and a goatee. I asked for an epidural about twenty hours into the siege. A few hours later, the baby's heart rate showed signs of stress and the doctor said an emergency C-section was necessary.
Because my pregnancy had been so easy—I had only gained twenty pounds, kept swimming and working, and, aside from the broken arm, didn't have any health issues—I assumed I would breeze through the birth. I hadn't researched C-sections—I skipped over that part in the What to Expectbook—and felt completely unprepared. And a little panicked.
Once I was on the operating table and prepped, the hospital staff allowed John into the room. He had eaten all of his snacks. A curtain hung below my neck so I could remain awake for the operation and not be traumatized by witnessing the procedure. NYU Medical Center is a teaching hospital, so dozens of uniformed people milled about the room. Team A—on the rhythm section side of the curtain—featured John in ill-fitting surgical scrubs, my friend the drug dealer, and me. Team B—on the business side—included doctors, students, nurses, and probably the entire woodwind section of the New York Philharmonic. I hadn't had an audience this big in years.
The C-section started. Other than a little pressure, I didn't feel much.
"Looks like a big baby," the first voice said.
Tug, tug, tug.
"Looks like a really big baby," the second voice said.
Yank, yank, yank.
"My god, that's the biggest babyI've ever seen!" said the third voice.
They rushed him to the scale and cheered. Our son, at eleven pounds, two ounces, and sixty centimeters long, had set a seven-year record at the hospital.
I love a good round of applause, but the drugs were wearing off and feeling was returning to my lower body. Not to upstage my baby's moment in the spotlight, but I needed help. The drug dealer, one step ahead of me, put morphine in my IV and, just as John handed me our son, I threw up.
Ah, that's the purpose of the emesis basin.
A big baby requires medical tests to check for insulin problems, so off he went with the pediatric team. Honestly, our "infant" was so big he probably could have walked himself. John went to check on the baby unaware that the testing center was in the neo-natal area. So our son, screaming and squirming next to the delicate preemies in the ward, looked a little, uh, large.
"My god," he said when he returned to the recovery room. "What have we done? He looks like King Kong."
We could hear Kong yelping from the corridor. Finally, a nurse brought him to us—and that was that. He was larger than life and ornery as hell.
Our son.
"Love you, forever," I said to him.
I drive home from Düsseldorf airport and pack my gown and merchandise for this evening's concert at the funeral home. I'm whiny and sad and the house feels way too quiet. Who plays a concert at a funeral home? This is ridiculous. I'm upset about my son's departure, exhausted, and would rather spend the day in bed worrying about his flight, eating crackers, and feeling sorry for myself. But no. I have to play a stupid concert at a funeral home. What was I thinking when I took this gig?
I arrive at the venue—a handsome building in a far-away German Dorf, and, still reeling from the emotional morning at the airport, enter the place with a bad attitude. The interior sparkles with candlelight, crystal, and polished silver. Not a casket or urn in sight. The concert will take place in the chapel. A gorgeous Steinway B sits center stage on a large Persian rug.
"Thank you so much for being here," says Priscilla, the promoter for tonight's event.
"Who is coming this evening?" I ask.
"About 150 people. Our families."
"Your families?"
"Our clients. The families of people who have passed away in the last year. They're still grieving, and this concert is a way to thank them for selecting our company to help them through this sad time in their lives."
Oh brother. This will be the gloomiest event in music history. I mean, my music is already on the melancholy side. Maybe they should have booked a Dixieland band or something. Or a reggae group.
"Have a snack or some wine or tea," she says as we enter the dressing room. "There are a few press people here to take photos of you during the sound check."
Press people? For a funeral home concert? Seriously?
The concert starts promptly at seven. The place is packed. It's also pin-drop quiet and emotionally charged. I start the program feeling sort of numb, but within sixteen bars a palpable energy emanates from the crowd. This sounds über new-agey, but I swear something spiritual is happening. I coast through a carefully curated set of compositions requested by the funeral home—"Flying, Falling;" "When Stars Dance;" "Peaceful Harbor."
I don't play particularly well—it's far from a brilliant performance—but what I play is meaningful in a way I have never experienced. I send out my music. The audience absorbs the notes and sends them back to me—rounder, fuller, grounded—with their own truths attached. I don't know how much suffering the people in this chapel have endured. I don't know who is grieving for whom; I just know there are 150 strangers who crave comfort, and I'm one of them. All I can do is try to connect my music with their individual needs and hope for the best.
Following the concert, I stand in the lobby and sign CDs. Who sells CDs at a funeral home? It feels like shameless marketing, but Priscilla has insisted that I do this. I talk to many of the guests—mostly people my age who have buried a parent in the last year, a few elderly folks who have lost a lifelong partner. As the crowd begins to thin and my young assistant starts to pack up the merchandise, a middle-aged couple with two teenage daughters approaches. The woman extends her hand.
"Thanks so much for playing 'A River Flows in You,' " she says. "That was Henry's favorite song. I felt like he was right here with us."
"Tell me about Henry," I say.
The mother sighs.
"He was my brother," says one of the girls, jumping to her mom's rescue. "He was twenty-one and just finishing university. He played basketball and he wasn't very good at it. But he liked music."
Henry's father, handsome and pale, stands to one side—the telltale scars of forced courage lining his once-youthful face. I've spent the day fighting back tears, but now I lose it. These brave parents, who surely have their own goofy childbirth story, their own tattered scrapbook of family photos, recollections of tearful goodbyes, and favorite songs, have lost their oldest son. They have chosen to remember him tonight by listening to piano music.
Henry's mom asks me about my own children. I tell her about putting my son on a plane to the USA that very morning.
"Oh," she says. "It's hard to say goodbye."
Who plays a concert in a funeral home? I do.
"We still miss Henry every day," says the mother, always the mother, forever the mother, as she thumbs through a stack of CDs. She stops and looks up at me. "I'll never forget the day he was born. I will love him forever."
Waltz of the Asparagus People
Good grief, I say to myself. Are those things real vegetables?
New York City, 1986: One evening, on a break from my cocktail-piano job at the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan—a hotel that hosts Major League baseball teams, B-list celebrities, and an annual transvestite event called Night of a Thousand Queens—I notice an odd display in a glass showcase in the lobby. Inside the large window, built into a marble wall, is a handmade village of Asparagus People. Over 200 of them inhabit the village, each skinny green stalk hand-painted, shellacked, and dressed in a little outfit.
"Yep," says José, a muscular housekeeping guy who overhears me while sweeping the granite floor. "I helped paint the little fuckers. I never wanna see another asparagus as long as I live."
"Insane," I say to the bass player from the lobby trio. "Truly the work of a madman."
"Check it out," he replies. "That one has a briefcase."
"Back to work, pleeez," says Mr. Prang, the German Food and Beverage manager who patrols the lobby. "Do not stare at zee veg-e-tables."
"What's hisproblem?" I ask, as Mr. Prang spins on his heels and clip-clops away from us. His cleated shoes make a lot of noise on the sparkling granite floor. No one likes Mr. Prang very much. When he's not storming through the lobby, he stands behind a potted palm next to the crystal fountain and glares at anyone who crosses his path, almost like he's looking for someone to fire.
On the next break the saxophone player joins us at Asparagus Village. "Whoa. What a trip. It's like—uh—an international village. See that cat sitting on the motorcycle? He's wearing a sombrero. Dig the brother asparagus hangin' out the window—they painted his face black. And he's wearin' one of those little African hats. And that Asian asparagus chick on the lounge chair? She looks hot in that bikini. Yeow!"
Asparagus children play in the Asparagus Village sandbox, each with an expression of delight on its tiny face. In the back, asparagus policemen loom, wearing uniforms made of tiny scraps of brown fabric, with matching hats. The hats have badges.
"I told you," says Mr. Prang. "Do not stare at zee veg-e-tables."
I ignore Mr. Prang and spend every break peering into the village, thinking about the manual labor that must have gone into a display that's pretty much ignored by most of the tourists lumbering through the lobby.
"Look, Steve, an Asparagus Village."
"That's nice, hon." Night of a Thousand Queens might have captured the fancy of the overstuffed and bleary-eyed visitors parked in the Hyatt lounge, but Asparagus Village? Not so interesting. If you've come all the way to New York from Wisconsin, why spend your time checking out a hand-painted vegetable display when you can watch 1,000 guys dressed in prom gowns?
Every spring the village—with all-new costumes and themes—graces the Hyatt hallway. One year we enjoy Cowboys and Indians; the following season we're treated to an amusement park (including a Ferris wheel full of stoned-looking asparagus girls wearing shorts and halter tops); the next time around we marvel at an asparagus Broadway show, complete with cast, pit orchestra, crew, and a chorus line of asparagus babes in skirts with red fringe. I fall in love with the whimsy and insanity of the display. But I never bother to ask why it's there.
Then, as is often the case in the hotel business, tragedy strikes. April arrives and Asparagus Village fails to appear in the showcase window. Several weeks later most of the hotel musicians are fired, causing me to wonder if all along there has been a strange correlation between asparagus and lounge music. I move on to the next gig and forget all about my skinny green friends.
Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, 2009:Every April asparagus season begins in Germany, where I now work as a pianist at Schlosshotel Lerbach, a castle-hotel. The start of the season—trumpeted by the whoops of joy normally reserved for firework displays on the Rhine—marks the arrival of a two-month national frenzy. The Germans, anxious to tuck into that first bite of the stalky white "king of vegetables," hover in the produce aisles of local markets, discussing recipes for cream of asparagus soup. Until recently it has been hard to find homegrown green asparagus here; the Germans prefer the version rendered white by denying it sunlight.
I'm caught in the madness. As guests order platters of asparagus accompanied by baby potatoes, thinly sliced ham, and an obscene amount of hollandaise sauce, I check my watch and wonder how much notice the chef needs to time my dinner with my break. This is what happens when you leave New York City and move to the German countryside. You stop smoking and drinking and start analyzing cooking times for vegetables. And if you're smart, you make friends with the chef.
Asparagus Village at the New York Hyatt flops back into my mind. Suddenly, it all makes sense. Here I am at the piano, playing "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" for my hollandaise-guzzling guests, and I remember Mr. Prang, a guy I haven't thought of for decades. I can hear the cleats on his shiny black shoes, accompanied by the staccato rhythm of his accented English as he barked orders at all of us. He must have been the one who supervised the painting of the Asparagus People faces, coercing the baffled New York staff to draw miniscule eyebrow hairs onto asparagus stalks the size of a pinky finger. Maybe Mr. Prang helped with the task, muttering obscenities while painstakingly dressing each asparagus person. Maybe he was frustrated by the American lack of respect for his prized vegetable and dreamed of the day when he could escape to Europe in time for the start of asparagus season. Maybe he wasn't such a bad guy after all.
Maybe he was lonely.
I can see him now, beckoning his army of hopeful Asparagus People, persuading them to break out of their glass cage and march, run, and finally waltz through the hotel lobby, dodging the sharp ankles and clodhopper feet of dazed tourists and drag queens, rushing for the exit, lunging toward the fresh air, determined not to get caught and squashed in the revolving doors of a different culture.
April 11, 2019 by Robin
In 1966 I play the Bach Minuet in G at my first piano recital at the Joseph Horne Company in downtown Pittsburgh. I have practiced efficiently, memorized the music, and prepared for the recital by performing in front of other students.
I am nine years old.
The Minuet in G has two "A" sections and two "B" sections—the form is AABB. I plow through the first half of the piece perfectly, gaining more confidence with every note I toss behind me. Puffed up and full of pride, I finish the first half and launch into the second section. The first note of the second section is a B natural.
Clam! With great conviction I play an A sharp, the quintessential wrong note. And I don't skim the key lightly, I hammer it. Bang! The hundred delicate, perfect notes I have played until this point fizzle and die. All that counts now is the wrong note. Knees tremble, palms sweat, face burns. The piano recital fight or flight response kicks in—there's a hungry bear chasing me through deep, crusty snow. I sense the audience cringing. I see my father in the front row raise one eyebrow. My teacher claps his hand to his forehead.
I'm in survival mode now, relying on muscle memory to propel me through the rest of the piece. In my mind I flee, climb a tree, and dangle upside-down from a low-hanging limb. I hang on for dear life. The bear licks his chops, growls, and snaps at my hands.
Overly dramatic? I think not. Any music student who has experienced a cortisol-induced hysterical brain-freeze while attempting to play a complicated passage will tell you the bear analogy is spot-on.
Back to my nine-year old self: I know I must finish the piece. The B section repeats. With a kid's logic I think that if I play it correctly the second time, the audience will know that I played it incorrectly the first time. I have an idea. I will intentionally play the wrong note again and listeners will never know I screwed up the first time.
I repeat the B section and hit that same really wrong note on purpose. Ha, I think. I've fooled everyone.
The bear, obviously bored with my refusal to slip from the tree into his slobbering maw, ambles away, checking occasionally to make sure I haven't dropped to the ground. I don't know this yet, but he'll be back. Next time I won't be so lucky.
At a certain point in a teenage musician's life, the bear wins more often than not. No one tells you this in music school, but learning to make a mistake, ignore it, and move on to the next moment can eventually mean the difference between having a career or not.
Failure—just as much as success—determines who we become as artists. We start out as idealistic musical messengers carrying copious notes of sadness and wonder and love. At some point—to get where we want to go— we must make mistakes. We must learn, as C.S Lewis wrote, to "fail forward."
At age fifteen, I became paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake while playing a piano concert. Paralyzed! Acting, singing, writing—those things seemed effortless, but playing the piano? Despite my best intentions, once the bear showed up, the party was over. I have a theory that playing a musical instrument well in a solo concert performance situation is the most difficult task in the world. Head in the game, eye-hand coordination, memory, detail, nuance—it's almost too much for one kid to think about. As a teenager, when we believe we're being judged for every skin blemish, fashion choice, or wrong note, it's damn near impossible.
Benyamin Nuss, a brilliant young classical pianist living in Germany and currently touring the world with his Final Fantasy program of computer-game music arranged for solo piano, has been gracing concert stages for twenty of his thirty years, playing extremely difficult classical repertoire with the emotional poise and technical wizardry of a seasoned musician twice his age. Benny is the kind of performer who never seems to have a bad day, never makes a mistake, never ever lets the bear chase him. I ask Benny if he can remember ever making a big mistake while performing. He laughs.
"There have been so many," he says. "But the first one that comes to mind happened when I was sixteen. I had my first girlfriend and we had only been together for a couple of weeks. For the first time there was something in my life other than music. I was playing Beethoven's Seventh Piano Sonata in D Major. The fourth movement is a Rondo with a figure that always repeats three notes. I was coming to the end, after the last repeat of this motive. I got stuck and stopped. Jumped some bars back because nothing better came to mind. Played the motive again. The same thing happened. Then I jumped back again. And again. And failed again. And again. Finally I just stopped. Didn't know what else to do."
The bear was nipping at Benny's heels. Or the heels of his hands.
"Beethoven ditched you at the finish line?" I say.
"Yeah. Or I ditched myself."
"I gave up. I stood, took a pathetic bow, and said, sorry."
"Oh no."
"Here's the thing: I could have improvised my way out of that Rondo, but it never occurred to me that I could mess with Beethoven just to save myself. Really—I could have made something up and no one, other than my teacher, my parents, and maybe a couple of classical music experts would have known."
"I bet if that happened to you now, you'd own it. Beethoven meets Nuss. Improvise through a memory lapse? Is that what you learned from that mistake?"
"Yeah. That. And to never think about my girlfriend when I should be focusing on the music."
Here's my favorite part of Benny's story: On that same night, after suffering what he considered a monumental defeat, Benny took some deep breaths in the wings, returned to the stage, took another bow, sat down, and whipped through his encore—Prokofiev's Toccata, twice as fast and furious as the piece he had just flubbed.
Boy versus bear. Boy wins.
Back to me and a chance meeting with the bear in 1978.
I've been working as a cocktail pianist to make money while attending college. I like the work—I sit in the corner, play the piano, and no one pays much attention to me. During the day I go to classes, take piano lessons, and practice for classical music recitals.
I'm scheduled to play Maurice Ravel's Piano Sonatine for the spring music department recital at the Chatham College chapel. I know the material. I love the material. I've practiced it until the piece is playing me, instead of the other way around. I'm confident and secure with my interpretation of the composer's intention, and I'm looking forward to the night's performance.
I'm nineteen years old and wearing a frilly black dress and strappy heels. I walk onstage, sit at the Steinway concert grand, and adjust the height of the bench. There are about seventy-five people in attendance, a small crowd for such a big space.
Something is wrong with me. I feel, I don't know, hollow. My hands are tingling. I take a deep breath, and begin playing the first movement of the Sonatine.
That's when it hits me. About sixteen bars into Mr. Ravel's elegantly written composition, my heart starts pounding. Boom. Boom. Boom. It's the fucking bear. My hands sweat and shake, and I'm moving in slow motion, except for my right knee, which has developed a high-speed twitch.
"You can do this, you can do this," I say to myself five or six times.
Another voice, a new, strange one coming from inside my head, starts poking at my self-confidence. Don't tell me the bear has a voice. A talking bear? Just what I need.
"Who are you?" I think.
The Voice of Doom, he replies in a loud, whiny voice. I look around. No one else can hear the Voice of Doom. Just me.
Get . . . Out . . . Of . . . Here, I think, trying hard to concentrate on the notes.
Nope, he says. I'm not goin'. You're a fake, and it's about time you realized it. Fake, fake, fake! You're gonna massacre this piece big time and all these people will hear you do it. You're nothing but a big faking faker. Fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.
He's yelling at me from inside my brain, somewhere between my ears and the top of my skull, and he keeps getting louder and louder.
I try to argue back but I can't get a word in edgewise.
This is awful.
I can't locate the notes. Or if I find them I play them so slowly that I have no idea where I am in the piece. Everything I've learned is gone—out the window like bubbles blown through a ring on a windy day.
I steal a glance at the audience. Grandma Curtis and Grandma Rawsthorne are in the second row with Aunt Jean and Uncle Bill. They're all smiles and don't seem to notice anything wrong. That's good. My parents are in the row behind them, but I look away before I can catch their reaction to my train wreck. Oh no. There's Bill Chrystal, my teacher, with a pained expression on his normally placid face, hovering on the side of the chapel, looking like he's ready to dash out the fire exit if things get any worse.
I'm freezing and my hands shake. I'm having a full-blown anxiety attack.
Oh. Wait. Now I get it. I'm onstage alone and the audience is paying attention. I've gotten used to the chatter and the laughter of the cocktail lounge. Where are the clinking glasses and the waiters barking orders at the bartender? Where is the whir of the blender, where are the cheerful hellos and goodbyes and how are yous? Where is all the noise? And how come these people are listening? What do they expect to hear?
No, no, no, no, no! Don't just sit there! Talk! Smoke a cigarette! Have an argument with your neighbor. Dispute the check with your overworked waitress, because you did, after all, only have two gin and tonics and you're being charged for three. Order another round of Strawberry Margaritas or some of those tasty chicken fingers. Do something, anything, but please please please don't listen to me. It is enough for me to listen to myself. Really, it's enough.
Well, there you have it, says Voice of Doom. Another concert career comes to a screeching halt.
The next day I decide to audition to be a showgirl in the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. Maybe I'll be good enough for the circus. Much easier than playing the piano.
Girl versus bear. Bear wins.
I never did join the circus, but I abandoned my concert pianist plans and returned to my cocktail lounge gig, which, in a way, shared certain circus elements with the Big Top. Clowns, for instance. Scantily-clad women. Salty snacks.
In my late twenties, long after my raging, adolescent hormones should have settled, I still felt the judgmental eyes of the world upon me. At home, practicing, I connected with my artistic side. In public I worried about being loved, or at the very least, liked. My neediness fueled the bear's desire to eat me alive. His hunger grew in direct proportion to my thirst for acceptance in a competitive world. So, anxiety. So, dread. So, fear of fear.
I put up with myself for a very long time.
Finally, somewhere around my forty-fifth birthday, the bear skulked away and never came back. I could tell you I donned my I AM FIERCE t-shirt and scared the bejesus out of the bear, but that's not what happened. It was more like this: Real life—kids, aging parents, death of friends, love, illness, making a living, paying the bills—reminded me that I have nothing to prove to anyone. I am not a competitor with a finish line; I am pianist. I play the way I play because I love music that reflects life. My mistakes are part of that process. Making them in public is part of the gig. Why be afraid?
Most musicians don't like to talk about their failures—who does?—but I think it's a good idea to let young musicians know that learning to outrun the bear is an essential part of their development. Perhaps not as important as good technique and discipline, but right up there with self-esteem and a disposition for risk-taking.
A readiness to fail often and fail well is a good indicator of future accomplishment. If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again. If I had given up the piano after that first ill-fated Bach Minuet in G, I might have avoided future scraps with the bear, but I would have surely missed out on the joy of sharing my musical stories with anyone willing to listen.
Social media magic: Right when I was writing this last paragraph, a YouTube clip of composer Maria Schneider popped up on my screen. Maria talks about writing for David Bowie and her many concerns about screwing up an expensive, risky assignment. Bowie says this: "The great thing about music is if the plane goes down, everyone walks away."
Everyone walks away—how I wish I could have heard this as a young adult. It's not life or death; it's music. It means everything in the moment, but nothing in the long run. All jokes aside, no one has ever gotten hurt by a wrong note, a lapsed memory, or awkward phrasing. Why not take a chance on making something beautiful?
On my current gig at an old, gold-dusted hotel in Cologne, Germany, I play a 1939 Steinway Model A. The keys of the instrument, contoured by the accumulated blunders of decades of players before me, feel smooth to my fingers when I sit down to play. My musical flaws add another layer of humanity to a piano that has witnessed eighty years of gaffes, all of them, thankfully, forgotten and forgiven by the fleet and reckless tempo of life. Toccata, double time.
I consider my career a fortuitous success built on a shaky foundation of multiple screw-ups and some sort of warped, magical thinking that has propelled me—clinging to the security blanket of my mistakes—into the brawny arms of opportunity. Opportunity, it turns out, sometimes wears a bear costume. I've outsmarted the bear by hugging him, feeding him marshmallows, and teaching him how to dance. Off we go—we're a clumsy twosome, but I've trained him to follow my lead.
Many thanks to Benyamin Nuss for sharing his story. Check out his newest album, Fantasy Worlds, here. I was at the launch concert—an astonishing performance by a brilliant artist. This piece, "Those Who Fight," seems an appropriate video to accompany this essay.
Watch the Maria Schneider interview here, courtesy of NEA Jazz Masters and NPR.
Play Something You Know
April 8, 2019 by Robin
"Did you leave anything at home?" Dad says as he heaves the first of my five suitcases into the big green taxi. "Or did you bring it all with you?"
The distance from Pittsburgh to Nantucket is 633 miles. It is the summer of 1976—the bicentennial summer. I've just arrived on Nantucket Island with an ancient Schwinn bicycle, two frazzled parents, a lot of music banging around in my head, and a vast amount of self confidence. Having just completed my freshman year of college, I'm looking forward to the beach, an army of Ivy League boys, and a waitressing job at a little Italian place called "Vincent's Italian Family Restaurant." I'm going to be a real woman and a superb waitress—sexy and sophisticated—conquering the world, one meatball at a time. On my days off I'll frolic on the beaches of Nantucket wearing a white bikini and no sunscreen. I'll gain my independence, make some money, have a string of boyfriends, and get a tan. This is my plan.
I own fourteen bathing suits, some blue jeans, a couple of black turtlenecks, and a dozen pairs of shoes. Not much else. But when you're eighteen and going away from home for the first time what else do you need? Most of the suitcases contain books. I've never been able to go anywhere without them. When I ran away from home at the age of eight, I packed eleven Nancy Drew books in my pink-and-orange paisley vinyl suitcase and stomped out the front door, making sure to let it slam behind me. I didn't have any food or clothing. Just the books. I didn't get very far. My valise was too full.
This time around the suitcases are much heavier.
It has taken us thirteen hours to drive from Pittsburgh to Cape Cod, then another few hours on the ferry over to Nantucket. It's the fifteenth of May. The sky is gray and the wind blows little circles of fallen magnolia blossoms around my feet. The taxi driver watches as my father loads each suitcase into the back of the wood-paneled station wagon. My dad moves in slow motion. The bike won't fit.
"Bob," says my mother. "You just go ahead with the bike and meet us there. Robin and I will accompany the bags to the rooming house. I'm sure the nice driver will give you the directions."
"Yep, up the road a piece, then make a left at the rotary, first fork, second right, till you hit the cobblestones," says the driver. "That'll be Main. Yep. You want Union, third turn on the right after you make that second left."
My father, who through the years has earned the nickname "Mr. Maps" for his inability to give simple directions, whips out his brand-new carefully folded street map of downtown Nantucket and squints at it, hard.
"Got it, Dad?," I say. I am so full of impatience I feel like I am going to just blow up, right there on Straight Wharf.
"Got it," he says. "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. Look here. What if I go left here at the corner and then cut over to Main, taking the left fork before I get to the right on Union?"
"Well," says the driver. "You could do that. Yep. You could do that. Cobblestones might be a little rough on that bike though. Yep."
"Maybe I'll do that," says Dad. "Or what about taking this route, here? Over Orange, down Main, hit the rotary go right." He jabs at the map. "That's it, that's the ticket. Or . . . "
"Could we please please pleasego?" I say. I am anxious to see where I will be living. But my Dad is holding on to the last few moments of my childhood. He is stalling.
"Bob, step on it," says my mother, coming to the rescue. "Let's get this show on the road." My mother has been saying "let's get this show on the road" to my Dad at least twice a day for as long as I've been alive.
What show? What road?The rooming house is a fine establishment run by the ever-vigilant Mrs. Dunham, who likes to think she is New England's number-one deterrent to teenage sex. There are six girls living in several bedrooms on the second floor. Most of the girls, myself included, will spend the summer inventing clever ways to sneak boyfriends upstairs so we can screw our brains out while Mrs. Dunham is off chasing after her own teenage sons who are sneaking into other boardinghouses elsewhere on the island. Posted in bold letters by the front door is a sign that reads NO BOYS PERMITTED ABOVE THE THIRD STEP. My father thinks this is an excellent thing. He arrives thirty minutes after us, a bit rattled after riding my old Schwinn over two hundred yards of Nantucket cobblestone. Years later, If I close my eyes, I'll still be able to see him bouncing along, all six feet of him on a skipper-blue bike built for a twelve-year old girl, with those ridiculous fringy things attached to the handlebars flying out behind him, delivering his little girl's bike to the place where she won't be needing it anymore.
"Those cobblestones are brutal," he says. "My head is still vibrating."
My parents depart on the early boat the next morning. They get the show on the road, and sneak out of town before I've crawled out of bed. This is a good thing, because my mom and I can avoid the Crying Ritual. Here's how the Crying Ritual goes. She cries, then I cry, then we cry together. Then we talk about how silly we are for crying, and cry some more. Big babies, that's what we are. It's exhausting.
I've got enough money to pay my rent for a week, plus enough extra to buy my waitress uniform. The uniform, which I purchase at a store on Main Street, appropriately called Butt-ner's, is a white polyester shift with a zipper up the front, possibly the only garment ever designed with the specific intent of making an attractive teenage girl look like Eleanor Roosevelt.
I start working at Vincent's Italian Family Restaurant that week. They give me a red-and-white-checked apron to wear over my frumpy frock. Someone tells me I have to wear a hair net, which is humiliating since I have about a yard of hair. The hair net is horrid—it's like having my head caught in a giant spider web. And it slips down over my eyes at the most inopportune times, causing me to swat at my head like a crazy person. But here I am: uniformed, accessorized, hair net in place, and ready to go. I even have a HI MY NAME IS ROBIN badge.
I am a disaster. We aren't just talking about spilled red wine and dropped plates of lasagna. There are, I'm ashamed to say, several incidents involving blood. I'm a far cry from the sexy and sophisticated waitress I want to be. I'm a gawky and uncoordinated teenager wearing a hair net and sensible shoes, fumbling plates and making a mess. And the worse part is, I know it. I finally understand why my mother has refused to allow me in her kitchen all these years.
This is my first excursion away from home. I've got enough money, a place to live, and a job. But I'm all twisted up inside. I'm the opposite of lonely, meeting too many people and making too many new friends. There are too many choices, too many options, too many boys. My life is chaotic. I'm tasting the murky waters of independence without a filter system in place.
I miss my piano. I don't expect to miss it, but I do. I miss the routine of practicing. I need something to hold onto. Structure. I hate my job. I hate my uniform. And I really hate the friggin' hair net. It might give structure to my hair, but not my life. I need a hair net for the soul. So I decide to try to find a piano to practice during the day, when I'm not maiming innocent diners and children in highchairs with flying carafes of Chianti.
Right on Main Street in downtown Nantucket is a famous old restaurant and bar called the Club Car. Jens, a hulking blond Swedish waiter I've met in the alley behind Vincent's Italian Family Restaurant, a man who is obsessed with putting his hand up my frumpy frock and breaking Mrs. Dunham's third-step rule, suggests the Club Car would be a good place to practice. I show up there one morning at nine and ask to speak to the manager, and I'm introduced to a very kind but lecherous older gentleman named Lino Tambellino. He agrees to let me practice at the Club Car every morning from nine to eleven.
"So, let me get this straight. You wanna play here in the mornin' for nobody?"
"Well, yes, Mr. Tambellino.
"Call me Lino, sweetheart."What a name, Lino Tambellino. He could join the My Name Is a Poem Club. I'm always on the lookout for new members.
"Okay, Lino. I just need someplace to practice. I'm studying music in college, well music and theater both, actually, and I need to practice the piano over the summer."
"You wanna eat here, too?"
"No, Mr., uh, Lino, I just want to practice in the morning."
"You gotta eat sweetheart."
"Thank you, but that's not necessary."
"What are you crazy? RICARDO! Get the babe somethin' to eat! What do you want, a steak?" Lino obviously has a warped sense of time. I guess when you live in a cocktail lounge it's easy to become a nocturnal creature, confusing breakfast with supper, and dawn with dusk.
"Lino, it's pretty early for me. Maybe a bagel or something, if you insist. But then I'd like to practice, if that's okay."
"Ricardo, we need bagels! And coffee. And juice. You want bacon? We got bacon. Go practice. Ricardo! We need some fuckin' bacon over here! Sweetheart, Ricardo will let you know when the food is ready."
Ricardo, I can tell, is going to be duking it out with the Swede on the third step of Mrs. Dunham's Home for New England Virgins. He is short and swarthy with a full head of dark brown curls and big brown eyes. I'll bet he's at least thirty. A professional waiter. Wow! I haven't been on the island for a week and I'm becoming an American clearinghouse for serious waiters from European countries. Where are all those Ivy League boys I've heard about? I want Harvard, Yale, and Brown, but I'm getting Stockholm, Fuerteventura, and Sarajevo. It's early in the summer. Maybe the Ivy League guys are still in school. Ricardo winks at me.
I go to the piano. It's an old upright grand, ornately carved ebony with lots of water stains and cigarette burns. But it's almost in tune and it has character. Oh, it feels so good to play. So, so good. I make up a song and play for about five minutes when Ricardo comes to announce the arrival of the breakfast. Drat. Reluctantly, I follow him to Lino's table. Ricardo winks again.
Stop that. Don't wink. Just don't. Wiggle your eyebrows if you must, but don't wink at me—it gives me the heebie-jeebies.
"Tell you what, sweetheart," Lino says in a low voice. I feel like I'm in a scene from The Godfather and Lino is about to whisper his plan to put a horse head in Ricardo's bed or something. I lean closer. "How's about you play here five nights a week?"
I am shocked. "For people, you mean?"
"Yeah, sweetheart, for people. I never heard of no piano player playin' for nobody. You sound nice. The people, my people, they'll like it. Eat your bacon. You want some shrimp salad? How about a lobster?"
"Oh, no thank you. I mean, no thank you to the food, I'm fine really." I'm flustered. "But thank you for the job offer. Wow. I'm very flattered. But there's a problem. I've got my waitressing job at Vincent's Italian Family Restaurant. And I work at night."
"So quit, sweetheart. I'll give you fifty bucks a night to play here. That's 250 clams a week. You ain't gonna make that schleppin' no minestrone at Vincent's. Can you start next week?"
I manage to get around the corner from the restaurant before I start jumping up and down and making whooping noises. This is like winning the lottery! I have a job, a real job, in show business!
No more hair net.
I run to Vincent's, resign, give my uniform to another trainee, toss the hair net in the dumpster in the alley, and race to the pay phone to call my parents with the news that their eighteen-year-old daughter is now a professional bar pianist.
My dad, Bob Rawsthorne, is a professional drummer and vibes player in the greater Pittsburgh area. He knows the score, and I think he'll be excited for me.
"Robin, get hold of yourself," my Dad shouts into the phone. "You only know twelve songs and eleven of them are Bach. What are you going to play!?"
Dad ships a crate of fake books—volumes of popular songs in easy-to-read arrangements—to me. My mother scrounges around and finds some passable evening gowns for me to wear and throws them in with the music. The crate is like the cocktail-piano version of the Popeil Pocket Fisherman. Dad has tucked in a note:
Bob's Excellent Rules for Success on a GIG:
1. Don't drink on the job.
2. Don't let the management push you around.
3. Always carry a roll of duct tape and an extension cord with you because with those two items you can solve virtually any problem.[
Sure enough, there's a roll of duct tape and an extension cord in the crate. Dad has also shipped a small sound system, since, heaven help us, I'll be singing. In spite of my father's doubts and warnings, I'm completely confident that I'll be successful. I've got a couple of old prom gowns and lots of undiscovered music in me, just waiting to be played. Nothing can go wrong.
After calling my parents, I race back to the Club Car to start practicing.
"Thank you again, Lino. I promise you I'll try my best."
"You're welcome sweetheart. I got a nice stuffed pork chop on the lunch menu. You like pork chops?"
New piano album: Home and Away, Goldsby's latest solo piano album, directly from the artist. Robin's music is available on all streaming platforms.
Yeah, Man
March 7, 2019 by Robin
"What key is this in?" Bob Rawsthorne, mallets hovering over his vibes, asked Johnny Costa, musical director of Mister Rogers Neighborhood as they prepared to record improvised music with complicated changes, live on tape. Playing with Costa was harrowing, inspirational, and full of surprises. Bob, my father, called the band the Kamikaze Trio. He and bassist Carl McVicker never knew what Costa would do next—he had a habit of switching keys at the last minute, causing low-level panic for his experienced sidemen. In the shoe-string budget world of public television, the trio was usually not offered more than one chance to get it right. Sink or swim.
Photo by James Kezman
"What key, what key?"
"Only God knows, Bobby," Costa said before launching into one of his Ravel-influenced cushions of sound. "Only God knows the key." God, that day, decided on D flat. Dad and Carl hung on for life, finished the take, and silently congratulated each other with a subtle "yeah, man" nod. Costa kissed his own hands a dozen times, raised them to the sky, and accepted praise from heaven.
Costa knew when he was on point.
"How about that, Bobby? How about that?"
Yeah, man. Beautiful, man. Yeah.
Next time you're at a jazz concert, check out the way musicians acknowledge each other when a solo section finishes. "Yeah, man," one of them will often say. Perhaps it's a whisper, sometimes it's a bark, or maybe it's an implied "yeah, man" bop-bop-bop of the head. It's endearing in any form.
The jazz world is often viewed as macho, cut-throat or, at best, way more competitive than one would hope. But many of the musicians I love are firmly in the "yeah, man" camp—playing their asses off while supporting and confirming the artistic skill and technical prowess of their colleagues.
Sometimes the "yeah, man" comes at the end of a so-so concert, a diplomatic way of recognizing group effort even if the performance wasn't up to par. "Yeah, man" might well mean we're all in this together. Or onward.
Onward works for me.
Drummer Adam Nussbaum tells a jazz urban-legend story about a musician who flew into New York City and hired a killer rhythm section for his recording. Following the session, some version of "yeah, man" took place, and the musician, for whom English (or jazz-speak) was not a primary language, said: "I am suck."
When the trio—a Greek chorus of tact—said, "no man, no man, you killed, you sounded great," the guest musician replied: "You full of asshole."
I heard this story decades ago, and still say I am suck when I have a bad day. I'm inclined to dissect a less than stellar performance by engaging in a painstaking analysis of the nebulous reasons for why a particular piece didn't go as well as planned. The jazz guys don't do this, as far as I can tell. Safety in numbers. They say "yeah, man" to each other and move on to the next thing.
But here's my challenge—as a soloist I'm missing the "yeah, man." I finish an improvised solo and there's no eye to catch, no nod to receive, no "yeah, man" to nourish my ego. Instead, I hear my old nemesis, Voice of Doom—playing kickball with my vulnerability—saying I am suck.
I've had moments of musical satisfaction and—dare I say it?—bliss, but not once have I kissed my fingers and raised them to the sky. Rarely have I stood to take a bow and heard the subtle "yeah, man" praise of a fellow troubadour.
My husband, musician and jazz educator John Goldsby, recently interviewed bassist Larry Grenadier for a Bass Magazine feature article. Larry, a brilliant player with a gazillion recordings as a sideman and a bandleader, had just launched his first solo bass recording, The Gleaners, on ECM. Solo, as in solo. Nuthin' but bass.
John: "How was it being in the studio alone—with only the engineer and producer present, but with no other musicians around?"
Larry: "To be in the studio alone is a trip. I had never really done that, except for maybe overdubbing something. You're waiting for something to react to, but it never comes. You have to get comfortable with that."
John: "You're waiting for the yeah, man, after the track!"
Larry: "Yeah, man. You've got to say it yourself!"
Welcome to my world, Mr. Grenadier.
I love working alone—but that hasn't always been the case. I started out as a soloist because it was a good way to make money. It still is. If a venue only has enough bread to pay one person, well, then, it might as well be me. But there were many times I could have used some company. Back in 1976, an hour of solo piano felt like three months. I swore the clock moved backwards. I would play six choruses of a Carole King tune, stretch out the vamp, triple the bridge, look at my watch and see that only forty-five seconds had passed.
Truthfully, I bored myself. I longed for other musicians with whom I could share twenty-minute breaks and forty-minute sets. All the musical responsibility of the gig sat firmly on my glitter-dusted Windsong-scented shoulders. When I screwed up, I had no one on the bandstand to cover for me. When I sounded good, I had no one to say "yeah, man." I never felt lonely—it's difficult to be wistful and sad in a bar packed with drunken yachtsmen and a handful of Kate Smith and Cher impersonators—but man, did I ever feel alone.
During the early part of my Piano Girl career I was a big baby bouncing on a booby-rigged piano bench, honestly believing that each droopy-assed breast-gawking gin-guzzling customer I encountered was paying studious attention to the nuances of my youthful, earnest music. I smiled like a half-witted cheerleader during the gig, but I beat myself up a lot at home, obsessing over mistakes I had made, sloppy playing, lapses in memory. Thunderous applause from a gaggle of lounge lizards can only get a gal so far. Here's a secret: Applause doesn't mean much to an artist with high, or even medium-high standards. All the standing ovations in the world won't make up for an I am suck kind of night.
I had the I am suck thing going on for years. And then one day—poof—I didn't. I attribute Voice of Doom's vanishing act to the birth of my children, the death of a friend, and the sudden realization that art might reflect life and love, but it's no substitute for the real deal. Not wanting to waste another minute on self-imposed negativity, I loosened the claw grip I had on the back of my neck and kicked Voice of Doom in the ass. I focused on family and let my music grow from a place of maternal joy. I cherished my time with my kids, but felt enormous gratitude for my hours alone at the piano. I stopped comparing myself to everyone else and found my voice, my style. I turned into a composer, a songwriter, a musician satisfied with making my own fun. Yeah, man.
Robin Spielberg, my dear friend and fellow traveler on the solo piano circuit, says this: "I feel like I live a double life. If you were to ask anyone about my personality, they would tell you I'm an extrovert. I enjoy parties, events, being with friends. However, I have chosen a field that requires that I work alone. I accept the alone-ness of my work, and now crave it. I like practicing in an empty house, with only my thoughts and the ticking of the clock. It's typical to fret over what others think of my music, but I'm reminded of good advice I once received: What others think of my music is none of my business."
I'm astonished by how lessons learned in music apply to real life. I've learned to say "yeah, man" to myself in many situations when there's no one around to say it for me. Consider motherhood, for example: It might take a village to raise a child, but any mom will tell you—most of the time we're flying solo. My kids left home two years ago. I cried my eyes out when they departed, worried about words I had forgotten to say, ways in which I could have been a better mother, lessons that slipped by me when time's tidal wave crashed onto the shores of our busy lives. But damn, in spite of numerous mistakes and flawed reasoning, I launched each of them with admirable values, a strong sense of self, and the ability to do their own laundry. Yeah, man.
In contrast, a solo piano career seems easy. Step onstage and play. It's that complicated and that simple.
Spielberg says this: "One of these days I will have a t-shirt made. On the front it will say I AM NOT SUCK. The back? It will say 'ATTA GIRL."
Sign up here to receive Robin's free newsletter. A new essay every month.
The Fast Lane
Here I am, a blond American woman in a short skirt racing down a busy stretch of the German Autobahnat 150 kilometers an hour. I'm too busy driving to calculate the conversion, but I must be approaching 100 miles per hour. I negotiate a curve, my knuckles grip the steering wheel. I pick up speed and feel the G-force—or whatever it's called—push me back into my seat.
"Überholen," says the elderly man sitting in the passenger seat. "Pass the car in front of you."
"No, thank you," I say. "I'm going fast enough."
"Überholen!" he says.
"No! Please. Bitte." There are four of us in the sedan. I glance in the rearview mirror and see a smug-looking German official strapped into the seat next to my shocked and silent husband.
"You must do this," says the man next to me. "You will do it!"
With my heart racing faster than my speeding car, I overtake the silver Mercedes in the center lane.
"Now, was that so difficult?" he whispers. "I can see you are ready for the next challenge."
This is not a scene from The Bourne Identity. This is the German Driver's Test—a complicated fifty-minute obstacle course that involves driving at high speeds on the Autobahn, parallel parking in a space the size of a paper towel, and manipulating a car through narrow European streets at rush hour while dodging grocery-laden pedestrians, bicyclists who insist on riding in the middle of the road, and small yipping dogs who should be on leashes but aren't.
Before moving to Germany, John and I were told that obtaining a driver's license here would be a simple matter of exchanging one license for another. It turns out that the rules—and there are a lot of rules—changed shortly before our arrival. Only citizens of European Union countries (and an odd smattering of American states like Wisconsin and Iowa) qualify for a license trade; those of us with New York State licenses must muddle through the system. This means numerous visits to modern offices with stern-looking administrators wearing designer eyeglasses in abstract shapes, an eight-hour Unfall-sofortmaßnahme(first aid)class, a tricky theoretical exam, and a fifty-minute hell ride with an official yelling commands in German, a language that, in spite of our twice-weekly lessons with Frau Ernst, continues to baffle us.
My dad taught me how to drive when I was sixteen years old. He owned a big old Chevy station wagon that cruised through Pittsburgh like it ruled the town. It almost drove itself.
"Here's the main thing," my dad used to say. "Speed. Think about speed. Whatever you do, don't drive too fast. And remember that every single car you encounter could have the likes of Mr. Phillips behind the wheel."
Mr. Phillips was the half-blind dry cleaner whose shop was on Mt. Washington, not far from our home. Dad warned us to dive into the bushes whenever we saw his car approaching. "Phillips!" we would yell, leaping over shrubbery as he careened down Virginia Avenue, going way too fast and threatening to take out anyone not wearing a blaze orange vest and hat. Dad always said Phillips had a prescription windshield, but I think that was a joke.
Like every teenager in the city of Pittsburgh, I got my license by driving slowly around a parking lot with a chubby and very nice Pennsylvania State Trooper named Officer Mike, who offered me a rainbow-sprinkled donut after I completed the exam. The written test took only ten minutes and involved multiple-choice questions about what to do when you come to a stop sign and what the yellow light in the middle of a traffic signal means. Between my father's gentle instruction and Officer Mike's good nature, I snagged my license, ate my donut, and became—over the course of the next few years—a pretty good driver. I even learned how to make minor repairs to the car I was driving—impressing boys in the neighborhood with my ability to start my car's finicky engine by holding down something called the butterfly valve with a Popsicle stick.
My accidents were few and minor. When I was eighteen and driving a Plymouth Valiant I had a fender-bender with a Ford Pinto driven by an eighty-two-year-old man. Shaken, I went to his car and saw him slumped over the steering wheel. I honestly thought I had killed him, but he was just resting. When I was nineteen I drove under a bus when my brakes failed while driving down McCardle Roadway, a long hill that leads from Mt. Washington into the city of Pittsburgh. A policeman pulled me out of the car. My father came to rescue me, assuring me that crashing into the bus hadn't been my fault.
"There's a difference between driving too fast and driving without brakes," he said.
When I moved to New York City at the age of twenty-one, I traded my Pennsylvania license for a New York State license but gave up my car, choosing to take taxis rather than participate in the alternate-side-of-the-street-parking drill that took place every morning at the crack of dawn. Sleep-deprived, hungover, and pissed-off car owners would race from their apartment buildings at 7:55 a.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to move their vehicles—if they could remember where they parked them the night before—to the opposite side of the street. This highly volatile early morning bumper-car action cleared the curbs for street cleaners, who hardly ever showed up. So I became the taxi queen of Manhattan. In my peak years I spent upwards of $400 a month on cabs, a bargain compared to what some of my friends and neighbors were paying for the privilege of owning a car in the city.
With the exception of a couple of car rentals, I didn't drive for fifteen years. Instead I relied on my stable of cabdrivers, car services, boyfriends with cars, and—when I was dating a compulsive gambler with Atlantic City connections—the occasional Lincoln Town Car or stretch limousine with a driver in a uniform and a chilled bottle of good champagne at the ready.
I still wonder how I survived the taxicabs. Every night for over a decade I would step into the city's nocturnal traffic, raise my arm, and hope my taxi luck would hold for one more day. I had deaf drivers, drivers who claimed to speak three languages perfectly—but not English—and drivers who didn't know the location of Central Park. Some cabbies watched Spanish soap operas on little dashboard televisions while speeding up Madison Avenue; others flew down Fifth while counting their money and conducting heated radio discussions about Haitian politics. These rides always had soundtracks with booming bass lines—salsa or merengue, hip-hop or opera or bluegrass or jazz. Sometimes the music played in my head long after the ride was over.
"Hey! You're going too fast!" said my dad to a cabbie once. Dad had come to New York City to visit me and was hanging onto the plastic strap dangling from the ceiling of the taxi. "Slow down!"
"Bada,bada,bada," said the cabbie. He turned up the radio—was it Greek music?—and picked up speed.
On one bleary night in 1988, after a rehearsal for a musical that no one would ever see, I had a couple of vodka martinis with my friends. Sufficiently calm and happy, we stepped out of the bar onto the sidewalk along Eighth Avenue just as a cloudburst hit. A springtime Manhattan monsoon. We huddled on the sidewalk and cursed the sideways rain. The Broadway theaters had just let out, and there was taxi mayhem on Eighth. Trucks sprayed God knows what over the curb, and pedestrians dashed from one side of the street to the other with soggy newspapers covering their heads. It would have been a miracle to find a cab in that weather.
"What to do, what to do," said Andy.
"Another drink?" said Kenny.
"Allow me," I said. "I have good taxi karma." I stepped onto the avenue, raised my taxi arm with the right amount of flair, and out of nowhere, a Yellow Cab screeched to a halt. Kenny, Andy, and I decided to share the cab, since the likelihood of finding another one in the storm was slim. We slid inside, all three of us hunched in the back, our wet jeans sticking to the vinyl seat. I sat in the middle.
"Where you go?" said Jim the driver (possibly not his real name, but that's what his ID said). Back then I always liked to call drivers by their first names, I felt the human connectionimproved my chances of arriving at my destination in one piece. This was a lesson my mother taught me. Always make the human connection.
"Good evening, Jim," I said. "We'll be stopping first at Thirty-fourth and Twelfth and then heading over to the Upper East Side."
Jim sighed and pulled into traffic just as a large dark sedan sped past on the left and cut us off.
"Hey, you big motherfuck!" yelled Jim. He hit the accelerator, blasted his horn, and the chase was on. Andy and Kenny grabbed their plastic ceiling straps. I covered my eyes. Our car was going way too fast, threatening to hydroplane, and the three of us whipped back and forth and smashed against each other every time the cab swerved left or right. Finally, the brakes squealed and we came to a halt. The black sedan was next to us, wedged between the cab and a row of parked cars. The sedan's windows were tinted, and I couldn't see the driver.
"Big motherfuck," yelled Jim through the closed door of his cab. "Big, big motherfuck!'
Kenny and Andy slid to the floor of the cab.
"Get down," they yelled at me.
"Excuse me, Jim," I said. You really should just KEEP DRIVING. You never know. The man in that car might have a gun. New York City can be very dangerous."
Kenny stuck his head up from the floor. "Right!" he said. "Listen to her. She's right. That guy might have a gun."
"I got gun, too," said Jim. "I am professional killer in my country." And with that, Jim reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a pistol.
"Jesus Christ," yelled Kenny, pulling me back to the floor with him.
Jim got out of the car and slammed the door behind him.
"What do we do now?" I said.
"So much for your taxi karma," said Andy. "No wonder there was no one riding in this guy's cab. He's a trained assassin."
"What kind of trained assassin is named Jim, for God's sake?" said Kenny. "Is he a trained assassin from, like, Wales?"
"He doesn't sound Welsh," said Andy.
"Is he shooting?" I asked.
"I don't know, I don't hear any shots," said Kenny.
"That's because he's an assassin," said Andy. "He's probably using a silencer."
We couldn't see what was going on, but we heard a lot of shouting. Then Jim got back in the car, looked over the seat, and said, "What you do there on floor? No sex in my cab!"
"No, no, no sex!" I said, crawling back onto the seat. "Listen, Jim, we've decided we're hungry, so, uh, maybe we can just get out here, because—look—there's an all-night diner right across the street!"
"Oh yes," said Kenny, "they have the most divine meatloaf."
I meant to look at Jim's last name and ID number so we could file a report, but all I wanted to do was get away from him. I threw some bills on the front seat. We leaped out of the cab and ran across the street holding hands. We sat in the diner and thought about calling the police. Instead we had another drink and ate meatloaf. The rain eventually stopped. We found separate cabs and headed home.
Those days, thankfully, are over. Now I'm out of practice, I'm living in the land of expert drivers, and I need get back in the driver's seat. From what I've heard the German Driver's Test is difficult. Officer Mike will probably not be waiting for me with a donut at the exam site.
I'm a little concerned about the stick-shift thing.
Like many American women, I've only driven cars with automatic transmissions. Okay, my mother can drive a stick shift and could probably drive an eighteen-wheeler, a train, or a stagecoach—just ask her—but she doesn't count, since she learned to drive before the automatic transmission became popular. Just about every man I've known has tried to convince me that driving an automatic isn't really driving—that the feel of the road can only be experienced with a stick shift. In most cases these are the same guys who enjoy spectator sports like boxing and American Gladiator, take vitamin pills with beer, and swear that with a little practice I'll be able to throw a baseball really far without dislocating my shoulder.
"Don't be such a girl," one of them—the compulsive gambler—told me. "It's easy. Here. You can practice on my car."
"Fine," I said, and took the wheel of his BMW convertible just outside of the Carnegie Deli. I drove a couple of blocks, then stalled out at the intersection of Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, not only blocking the box, but creating one of those classic dumb-blond spectacles. Two screaming UPS men and a red-faced bus driver entered the fray, and, by the time I lurched my way out of the intersection, I had a bigger audience than most Off Broadway theaters on matinee day.
In Germany I've got little choice about the stick shift. Almost all cars here have standard transmissions. My American license—valid for a year after moving—is about to expire. I've been practicing basic driving skills on a used Citroën with a leaking roof and an automatic transmission. I couldtake the test with an automatic car, but then my license will forever limit me to an automatic—not such a good thing in Europe. John, who doesn't know about the Manhattan BMW incident, convinces me that I am 100 percent capable of learning to drive a stick shift.
"It's easy," says John. "Just a matter of timing the clutch release."
"It's easy," says my mother on the telephone. "Don't be a wimp."
"It's easy," says my dad. "But whatever you do, don't drive too fast. And remember Phillips. There's someone like him in every country."
We buy a new car—a Volkswagen Passat station wagon—with a manual transmission. I prepare to join the ranks of stick-shift drivers.
Everyone applying for a license in Germany, regardless of age or previous driving experience, is required to attend an accredited Fahrschule(driver's school). These guys charge about thirty euros an hour for a lesson. A trainee isn't permitted to practice driving with anyone else but the Fahrschuleinstructor—none of this business of driving around the Walmart parking lot with your mother clutching the dashboard and slamming her foot into an imaginary brake. A student can practice only with the teacher, in the teacher's car.
Seems like a FahrschuleMafia to me. Only the teacher can deem the student capable of taking the actual test, and the test itself must be taken in the Fahrschulecar. A less-than-ethical instructor can clock a lot of extra hours by convincing vulnerable students they're not "ready." To get a license, an average student driver will typically spend upwards of 1,200 euros on training and test fees.
We don't want to get ripped off, so I ask my nineteen-year-old babysitter, who has recently passed the test, to recommend a teacher. She suggests a school in the neighborhood with a good reputation, run by an elderly man with Coke-bottle glasses, a froth of white hair, and a truckload of patience. He is a Phillips look-alike. We call him Magoo.
He's a nice guy, but I don't think Herr Magoo can actually see what he's doing. Maybe a semi-blind driving instructor isn't the greatest idea, but we sign up, mainly because Magoo seems fair, treats us with respect, and agrees to allow John—a skilled New York City stick-shift driver—to take the test with just one lesson. He thinks I might be ready after five or six hours of stick-shift training.
The cars used by Fahrschuleteachers have double gas, brake, and clutch controls, allowing the instructor to override the trainee's bad judgment. The cars also have large signs that say Fahrschule, turning the vehicle into a target for experienced drivers having a bad day.
I jerk-jerk-jerk my way around town while other drivers tailgate me, blink their lights, and honk their horns.
"Don't mind them, my dear. You're doing fine. Just keep the pace and stay calm." Magoo is the sweetest guy, even though he keeps calling me Frau Neu. "You take your time, Frau Neu," he says.
"Herr Magoo," I say. "I'm not Frau Neu. I'm Frau Goldsby."
"Yes," he says, "but you look like Frau Neu. Please forgive me."
Like a bat or a toddler's mother, Magoo seems to have built-in radar for dangerous situations. His dancing feet hover over his own clutch and brake pedals, taking action in dangerous situations. Gentleman that he is, he creates the illusion that I'm in control, and I start to think of myself as a pretty smooth driver, maybe even one of the boys, maybe even ready for baseball throwing and Manhattan intersections. Until we get to the hills. On our fourth lesson Magoo forces me away from the flat roads of the valley and up into the mountains, a novice stick-shift driver's worst nightmare.
Dozens of times the clutch slips, the car stalls and rolls backwards. Once I almost slide into a red Porsche while attempting to cross railroad tracks. While the words to "Teen Angel" run through my head, Magoo and his happy feet save the day. My Magoo is so brave; he never even gasps or utters an obscenity. Only once, in six lessons, does he lose his cool. We're exiting the Autobahn, and I stop where I should be yielding.
"My God, Frau Neu, you're going to kill us both."
I burst into tears. Magoo doesn't notice.
After my sixth lesson he proclaims me ready for the road test. First I must have my vision checked, attend the daylong Unfall-Sofortmaßnahmeclass—which includes resuscitating a rubber dummy named Manni—and pass the driver's theory test. Nervous about the German technical language, we pay extra for an English study guide and another fee to take the test in English. John fails the theory test the first time, because—in true guy fashion—he refuses to study the manual he has paid for. The manual, it turns out, is daunting, and the English, obviously translated by a non-native speaker, is counterintuitive. There are over 900 questions in the manual, many of them with photos and diagrams designed to baffle those of us suffering from hysterical comprehension disorder. But if I want the license I have to pass the test. So I hit the books and learn to answer questions like these:
• What is the maximum speed you are allowed to drive a truck with a permissible total mass of 3.0 tons on roads with one marked lane for each direction outside built-up areas?
• How must a load be marked in darkness or bad visibility when it extends laterally more than 40 cm beyond the side-lights of the vehicle?
• Your vehicle loses oil. How much drinking water can be polluted by a single drop of oil?
The day of the theory test, John goes with me so he can have a second try. This costs another 100 euros. I'm unsure of myself and sit next to him so I can copy, but the authorities give us separate tests. We both pass, which is a good thing since we're running out of money.
Now we're qualified to take the all-important road test. I'm dreading this. Magoo, having received the results of our written exams and permission to schedule back-to-back tests for husband and wife, arranges the date and time for our two-hour brush with divorce. Our slot is at eight on a Monday morning, not exactly a convenient time for a jazz musician and the mother of a two-year-old.
I'm still quite concerned about the stick shift. On the appointed day I wear a short skirt; if I strip the gears of the Fahrschulecar, perhaps this will distract the officer in charge.
"Go ahead, wear the skirt," says John. He's a little miffed that I passed the theory test the first time and he didn't. "You need all the help you can get."
My stomach rumbles. John volunteers to go first. He sits in the front with Magoo; I sit in the back with Officer Schweinsteiger, our designated government driving official, a pleasant guy in a gray shirt who smells like the two packs of cigarettes he smoked the day before.
As John pulls into the morning traffic, Officer Schweinsteiger shouts orders in German, all of which John obeys. But halfway through the test—in between commands—Officer Schweinsteiger starts gossiping with Magoo. It becomes difficult—novices in German that we are—to distinguish the all-important Driver's Test command from the chitchat. Is he talking about FC Köln, last night's Westernhagen concert, or telling John to stop at the next corner? Hard to tell.
After fifty minutes of John's perfect driving, including fifteen minutes on the Autobahn, it's time to head back to home base. But something odd happens. With a twinkle in his eye, Officer Schweinsteigerbegins yelling, "LEFT TURN! LEFT TURN! LEFT TURN!"
Don't fall for it, I think, because I can see the smirk on Schweinsteiger's face and, even though he may be an officer of the law, I know he's up to no good. I can also see the DO NOT ENTER sign.
John turns left and drives the wrong way down a one-way street.
It's a trick, but there's nothing I can do. Also, there are cars headed in our direction, and I'm worried we're going to crash. I cover my eyes.
We do not crash. When we drive back into the parking lot, Officer Schweinsteiger grins and tells John he has failed the test. He tells him he needs more practice, that he doesn't swivel his head enough when merging on the Autobahn, and that he shouldn't drive the wrong way on one-way streets. John starts to defend himself, but really, it's difficult to argue that last point.
Now it's my turn. I think it's a silly waste of everyone's time. John is the best driver I know and he has failed. I am currently the worst driver I know, so what are my chances of passing? I'm upset for John and concerned for myself, and I just want to go home, play with my son, and drink a dozen cups of strong coffee. I feel stupid for being such a lousy driver. And I feel stupid for feeling so stupid.
There's a moment of petrol-scented silence as all four of us sit in the car, waiting for me to turn on the engine.
"Frau Neu?" says Magoo.
"It's Goldsby," I say.
"Sorry. Frau Goldsby, it's time for your test. Are you ready?"
"Yes," I say. "Let's do it."
Magoo pats my hand, signaling, in a Magoo kind of way, that everything will be okay. I pull out of the lot and the car stalls a handful of times. Onward. I drive two blocks with the emergency brake on and come close to a head-on collision with a garbage truck on a hill. All the while, I'm swiveling my head, looking out for Phillips, and making sure I don't go over the speed limit. Good.
Now it's time for the Autobahn. I merge and get us into the slow lane without an incident. I'm doing this. I am. I catch John's eye in the rearview mirror, hoping for a nod of compassion or pride or something. But he's busy trying to figure out how to stuff Schweinsteiger's head into the ashtray.
I cruise along in the slow lane until Magoo tells me to pass the car in front of me. I panic and say no. He uses his pedal to floor it. The speedometer reaches 140, and, because I have no choice, I clutch the steering wheel and pass the other drivers. I glance at John, who has snapped to attention. He doesn't know that Magoo has overridden my controls, and he thinks, as does Officer Schweinsteiger, that I've gotten into the fast lane all by myself.
Whatever you do, I hear my father saying, don't drive too fast.
But maybe this speed is just right. Officer Schweinsteiger grunts, which must be an encouraging sign.
John looks horrified, as if his nice slowpoke wife has been possessed by an evil Autobahnspirit and is now part of a miniskirted Formula 1 team.
Go, go, go. All on my own I keep up the speed and coast past the other cars in the slow lane. Magoo, Schweinsteiger, and John are my reluctant cheerleaders, coaxing me toward the exit with a conspiratorial silence.
It's easy, I say to myself. Before I know it, I've reached the Ausfahrt.
I pass the test. Whether this is due to my outfit, my expertise in head swiveling, or Officer Schweinsteiger's gratitude that I avoided a Massenunfall—massive pile-up—I have no idea. I don't say this out loud—divorce is not on this morning's agenda—but I like to think I've passed because I've managed to avoid driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Maybe I should suggest we go home and watch a boxing match or toss some baseballs around.
A week later John takes the road test again and passes. This costs another 200 euros and most likely saves our marriage. Guys don't like to be told they're lousy drivers. For that matter, neither do women, but we're used to it. By the way, if a student driver fails the test three times, he's required by law to seek the help of a German psychologist, one of the all-time great incentives for passing any kind of test.
I'm now the proud owner of a German Driver's License. It's candy-pink and the size of a passport and looks like a certificate of merit I once received in the seventh grade for swimming twenty-five laps of the Prospect Junior High School pool. Two years will pass before I'm comfortable driving a stick shift, during which time I'll remain convinced that the automatic transmission is one of world's finest inventions.
Sometimes, if you want to get where you have to go, you need to learn a few new tricks. Will I ever be one of the boys? Don't think so. Am I grateful to all the men who have contributed to my driver's education? Yes. Let's hear it for the boys. It took my dad, Phillips, Officer Mike, several hundred thrill rides piloted by an international squad of part-time taxi drivers—including a professional killer—a gambling man with a charming smile and a stalled BMW, a patient husband, Magoo, and Officer Schweinsteiger, but now I'm on my own, and I'm cruising.
Not too fast, not too slow. Just right. Next time I'm in Manhattan, I'm thinking about heading for Fifty-seventh and Sixth.
Bottoms Up: Three Conversations about Aging
February 7, 2019 by Robin
I've been thinking a lot about aging and the music business, mainly because I'm aging and I'm in the music business. A few weeks ago, I had three age-related conversations on the same day. Meet Bob, Fred, and Jörg Achim, three of my musical heroes.
Conversation #1: Bob
"I'm so old Stephen Foster was my first duo partner."
This is one of Bob's lines—a joke he pulls out of his trap case whenever the topic of old age comes up. He used to tell this joke about other musicians. Now, approaching his eighty-fifth birthday, he tells it about himself.
"I'm so old my wife says I make the same sounds as the the coffee maker."
"Did you write that joke?" I ask.
"No," he says. "I am a thief of bad gags."
Bob is my father and he's still playing gigs. He's the proud owner of two drum sets (a faded greenish-blue Premier and a silver sparkle Ludwig), two new hips (also silver sparkle), a collection of ancient Zildjian cymbals, and a vast repertoire of funny stories. Today he has received a call from a perky young woman (let's call her Becky) who wants to book him—a year in advance—for a gig in February 2020. The gig is at a fancy-pants senior residence, the kind of venue where Bob's band, a sophisticated mix of great music and comedy, tends to be a big hit.
"I told Becky the date will be fine," Bob tells me. "And then she wants to know if I have video. Video? What the hell does she want video for?"
"Well," I say, "that's how people book bands these days."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But no way am I making a video at my age. I told Becky, 'look, I'm almost eighty-five; I'm really good at what I do even though I'm not exactly sure what it is. I have no video. No video!' I asked her where she got my name and she said that the Saint Barnabus senior center told her we were the absolutely the best band in the world for the gig. And I said, 'you still need video after that recommendation?' "
"Get this: She wanted to know if it was 'safe' to book me that far in advance."
"Because you're almost eighty-five."
"Because I'm almost eighty-five."
"Dad, please don't tell me you hit her with the Stephen Foster joke."
"Of course I did. But she didn't laugh—probably never heard of Stephen Foster—so I kept going. 'Becky,' I said, 'I'm so old I don't even buy green bananas. I'm so old my social security number is thirteen. I'm so old John Philip Sousa was my roommate at music school. I need 10 strokes to play a 5 stroke roll. It takes me a half hour to play "The Minute Waltz." I'm so old I was in the house band at Ford's Theater. One of my students was the drummer boy in Pickett's charge. I'm so old I've seen Halley's comet three times.' "
"Stop!" I say.
"Funny stuff, right? But Becky didn't laugh. Not once. Can you imagine? Event planners these days have no sense of humor. But I kept going—I said 'at my age everything is either dried up or it leaks . . .' You know me. I've got a million old age jokes."
"I think I wore her down. She gave me the gig. Now all I have to do is stay alive. Hey, did you know my Slingerland high-hat stand lasted longer than my hips?"
Conversation #2: Fred (and Bud)
photo by P. Marion
"Did I ever tell you about the whiskey and the beet juice? It was horrible," says Fred (maybe not his real name), describing an evening—fifteen years ago—that started out as a good-natured whiskey tasting but turned into a woozy-doozy, tilt-a-whirl, fall-down-in-a-dead-faint night. Fred, a trombone player, and his buddy, Bud, also a trombone player, are now middle-aged. At the time of the whiskey incident, they were bandmates, sitting side by side in the same trombone section.
Fred and I huddle in a corner at a crowded post-concert reception for musicians and (way too many) friends. Because I often write goofy, true stories about musicians and gigs gone wrong, I hear many tales of youthful abandon, some of them involving alcohol. But the one about the whiskey and the beet juice grabs my attention. I'm intrigued, because I knew the story will not end well. I have always been a sucker for trombone humor and boyish folly.
Please note: Fred and Bud currently lead role-model lives as successful, working musicians. They are smart, funny, disciplined trombonists with mind-blowing talent. The following incident was a youthful misstep on a path to respectability. We've all been there. Sort of.
"It was Christmas time," says Fred. "Bud and I left rehearsal and decided to do a little seasonal whiskey tasting. Just a little. Harmless. And fun. But one thing led to the next and before we knew it, we were really, really drunk. Tanked."
"Yes," I say. "Whiskey will do that."
"I crashed at Bud's house so I could walk to the gig the next morning. We were scheduled to record that day. I woke up feeling terrible, just terrible, like I was gonna die. The mother of all hangovers. And Bud convinced me to drink some freshly-pressed beet juice—he said it was the world's best hangover remedy."
"Beet juice? Was he crazy? So what happened? Did it help?"
"I guzzled half a liter of the damn beet juice. Bud and I arrived at the studio. I was feeling worse and worse. And the first tune the conductor called was 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' which, sadly, featured me."
"Solo?"
"Yuletide cheer."
"All that shit."
"Like your job isn't hard enough without a hangover."
"I was dying. I knew I was gonna throw up, but I felt like I had to get through the damn piece, since, you know, we were recording."
"Did you make it?"
"I got halfway through the solo and the beet juice started coming up, but I kept playing."
"Oh, no."
"Oh, yeah. Right in the middle of the bridge—right in the faithful friends gather near to us part—it started shooting out the sides of my mouth. Looked like I was hemorrhaging or something. I was using a Humes & Berg Velvetone mute—we call it a bucket mute. It's nice and white and fluffy on the inside. But not that day—the beet juice got all over the mute. So much for white and fluffy."
"Did anyone notice?"
"Bud noticed. He could hardly play 'cause he was laughing his ass off. But the other musicians were all dealing with their own issues. Anyway, when the tune was over, I raced to the men's room and hurled the beet juice all over the floor. Looked like someone had been murdered in there."
"Bathtub scene in Scarface?"
"Worse."
"Why have I never heard this story?" Fred and I have been friends forever.
"I forced myself to forget about it. But we've had a trombone sub this week. New kid on the block. Young. And the kid looked at my bucket mute and seemed confused by the weird color. I realized that—all these years later—the white and fluffy part still has beet juice stains. So I told him the story."
"Sort of like a warning?" I ask.
"No. Warnings won't help. He's young. He'll make his own stupid mistakes. He'll stain his own bucket."
"Part of growing up," I say. "Thank God those days are behind us."
"Yeah," says Fred. "Something like that."
Conversation #3: Jörg Achim
"That was a masterful concert," I say to the conductor of tonight's program, Jörg Achim Keller. "You share such a cool history with the musicians in this band—you really know how to write for them."
After my harrowing talk with Fred, I have shuffled my way to the other side of the cocktail party, a large glass of sparkling water in my hand, thinking about my own long-ago drunken episodes. At least I never threw up into my instrument. Jeez. Forget whiskey. Fred has absolutely ruined freshly-pressed beet juice for me.
So. Jörg Achim and I talk briefly about his connection to several of the musicians in tonight's ensemble. "You really know your musicians. Not just musically, but personally. That kind of history is like gold," I say.
Jörg Achim asks me about my job as a cocktail lounge musician. "How often do you play at the hotel?"
"Three days a week, sometimes more. Last year I played close to two hundred gigs."
"That's a lot of solo piano."
At this point another person slides into the conversation.
"Don't you get lonely sitting at the piano by yourself?" she says, making a sad face. Ah, the well-meaning interloper.
"No! It's the best job in the world." I often find myself defending my profession as a background musician. "I play an excellent Steinway, I play the music I want to hear, the audience is constantly changing, I can work on new material or play my older compositions. I've been doing this for forty years. Why should I be lonely?"
"Forty years?" She looks appalled, as if I've told her I've spent forty years digging ditches or slinging hash.
"Yes. Forty years. More actually. I had my first gig when I was eighteen." I almost say I'm so old I was the lounge pianist on the Mayflower, but I stop myself.
"That's a long time. So, do you practice on the job?" she asks.
"No!" I say.
Jörg Achim jumps in: "Hey, there's a lot of value to playing a background music job for that long. For one thing, the bottom comes up."
"Say that again, please." I think I understand what he's saying, but I'm not sure.
"Yeah—when you're playing so often in front of people, your worst moments get less noticeable. The bottom comes up, so to speak. In my opinion, that's the best way to assess someone's playing—not by their flashes of genius, but by their worst moments. Even a complete amateur can have sparks of brilliance. But how low is their bottom? Pretty low, usually. With your line of work—decades of playing for an audience in a no-pressure situation, the bottom keeps getting higher and higher."
"Yeah," I say. "I like that. Bottoms up. One of the benefits of aging."
Later tonight, after I'm home and trying to stitch together the tatters of the day, I wonder if Jörg Achim's bottoms up theory might not apply to life in general. We all make mistakes as adults, but as we mature, we learn to tap-dance around actions that have made us look, sound, or feel bad in the not-so-distant past. Like whiskey and beet juice, for instance.
I'm over sixty and lead a pretty respectable life, which is saying something considering my spotty history as a Chopin-playing stripper and teen-scream horror-queen film star (whose chopped-off head ends up in a toilet). My bottom has continued to rise, ever so slightly, over the course of six decades. I've stopped taking on tasks that confound me or cause grief. I've climbed out of professional and private trenches, scraped the dirt out from underneath my Piano Girl fingernails, and kept moving forward, eyes scanning the pavement (and the piano) for patches of treachery. Sometimes I miss the extreme risk-taking of my youth, but these days I love feeling safe, cradled in contentment's soft underbelly, venturing out now and then to explore new, unthreatening territory. My bad, artistically and personally, has gotten pretty good. Bottoms up.
Maybe we don't need 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery—maybe we need 10,000 hours to raise the bottom. Or maybe it's the same thing. However you look at it, you can't get there without growing older.
I wonder what Stephen Foster or John Philip Sousa would say on this topic—I'll have to get Bob to ask them. They often get together for a jam session. Then they go fishing.
Whiskey for everyone. Just a little.
Personal note from RMG: I spent much of my summer holiday sorting through recordings and I've come up with a gorgeous playlist featuring my favorite "gentle music" players, including Ludovico Einaudi, Robin Spielberg, Christine Brown, Yiruma, Liz Story, et moi. I'm really proud of this playlist and hope it will bring you peace and joy. Right now would be a good time to listen. Click here to listen on Spotify or Apple Music.
Robin Goldsby Newsletter
3:00 pm Excelsior Ernst Sunday Afternoon... @ Excelsior Hotel Ernst
Excelsior Ernst Sunday Afternoon... @ Excelsior Hotel Ernst
Listen to Steinway Artist Robin Goldsby's beautiful music while enjoying Afternoon Tea in the Wintergarten of Cologne's most famous grand hotel—the Excelsior Ernst, located next to the Cologne Cathedral (The Dom). Every Friday, Saturday, and[...]
3:00 pm Excelsior Ernst Friday Afternoon... @ Excelsior Hotel Ernst
Excelsior Ernst Friday Afternoon... @ Excelsior Hotel Ernst
3:00 pm Excelsior Ernst Saturday Afterno... @ Excelsior Hotel Ernst
Excelsior Ernst Saturday Afterno... @ Excelsior Hotel Ernst
@robingoldsby
Love is everything. https://t.co/NozzqBmfmx January 16, 2020 8:18 pm
Hey South Carolina! I'm coming back for more of that Low Country charm. Concert on Feb 16th. Details in the poster.… https://t.co/zctdXvLdYR January 11, 2020 7:47 am
Attention Piano Girl friends and fans in the Washington DC area—I'm headed your way on Feb 22. Tickets here:… https://t.co/EIVE8adczC January 11, 2020 6:16 am
@robinspielberg Wow! January 11, 2020 5:44 am
So important! https://t.co/zX4F29AmIZ January 6, 2020 8:52 pm
https://twitter.com/robingoldsby
Robin Goldsby is a Steinway Artist
Copyright © 2020 Robin Meloy Goldsby
Site customization by Pixel Currents LLC
AGB | Impressum | Imprint and Shipping Information