The Piano Shop, book review

I am sitting here thinking to myself “stupid book review” but of course I only do it for myself. I brought a small pile of books on this trip, and the first one I picked up to read was “The Piano Shop on the Left Bank” (Thad Carhart). It’s not very long (compared with some of the others I brought), not very heavy, and not very intimidating considering that I haven’t actually read a book in months.

My mother says that Carhart took piano lessons from our family piano teacher and friend, Marilynn Rowland. The book is nicely written and to story very sweet, but there is nothing powerful about it. A middle-aged man with 2 small children develops a friendship with Parisien used-piano dealer, and re-discovers his childhood love of the piano. But I never fell in love with it, not even for a minute, though it was pleasant enough company for a while. As usual, here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

“I can still remember asking Miss Pemberton, plainly and naively, why I had to play Beethoven etude for others when I had mastered it to her satisfaction and had already become tired of it.
“’Music isn’t music unless we share it with others,’ she told me, but even then that sentiment seemed unsatisfactory to me.” (pg 59-60)

It’s a bit like the old tree falling in the forest question or Sex and the City’s variation: is cheating cheating if you don’t get caught? If you play music because you love to play music, what difference does it make if anyone else enjoys it? What difference does it make if a tree falls in the forest or not? Why would you say you aren’t going to sleep with other people if you have every intention of doing so? I mean, it would be wrong to schedule a concert and then refuse to play for the people who have arrived to hear you, but if you never schedule the concert, I agree with Carhart, no harm no foul.

But I think his teacher was trying to expand his horizons. He might have loved playing for others. However, generally, it works better for people to do things that they actually want to do.

“I hadn’t considered the suite, as the French put it, the follow-through to circumstances and events that lends life its air at once poignant and meaningful.” (pg 73)

“He would say in mock self-deprecation, “je ne suis qu’un bricoleur” (“I am only a handyman.”), but the born tinkerer’s love of a challenge gleamed in his eyes as he said it.
“Press key, hear sound: the fundamentals are simple but the particulars very quickly become complicated.” (pg 76)

“Luc and I virtually never asked about each other’s personal lives, although details occasionally came out as we talked. This was understood as respect rather than lack of interest, a sometimes surprising notion for an American used to divulging of facts and the urgent expectation of intimacy in new relationships.” (pg 84)

“’The interesting thing is that it’s not just pianists or even musicians who attend them (master classes). Everyone goes – writers, painters, people from the community – lots of people who don’t know anything particular about music. He (Gyorgy Sebok) teaches piano, yes, but at the same time he manages to teach something profound about life.’” (pg 216)

“’…one of the most prestigious grandes ecoles in France; only the smartest are admitted. And do you know what the French say about it? A polytechnicien knows everything, but nothing else.’” (pg 220)

“The most difficult aspect of a master class, Sebok said, is trying to get the student to an emptiness, to a still point, where he can truly hear what he is doing. ‘It’s not an absence, it’s an emptiness, and that is sometimes subtle point to grasp for a young person.’ For him, music had to flow out of the pianist, and in order for that to happen there had to be a quiet center.
“….
“Sebok continually made clear from his own example that there is no perfection, there is only a lifelong process of making music; once technique and commitment have been suitably mastered, you have to decide for yourself on the right interpretation. It is a complex message.” (pg 223)

This final quote is the perfect end to my list of quotes, as it describes a philosophy I believe. I remember Barbara Kingsolover (or was it Anne Lamotte?) saying that every time she opens one of her own books, she sees things she wants to change about it. The revisions are endless, and yet at the same time they must end in order for the book to be shared. What’s different about music is that it only happens in an instant while the words of a book lie on its pages until the book turns to dirt.

Relationships, likewise, are never perfect, but every minute that you share together becomes part of your history, part of your life, part of you. Carolyn pointed out in her comment a few weeks back that the relationship IS the destination. I don’t actually agree with that (tho she may be more of an expert than I). I believe something more like life is a journey and there actually never is any destination, only a series of milestones. Or, in the words of the great Janis Joplin (Ball and Chain), “I mean, if you got a cat for one day, man I mean, if you, say, say, if you want a cat for 365 days, right You ain't got him for 365 days, you got him for one day, man. Well I tell you that one day, man, better be your life, man. Because, you know, you can say, oh man, you can cry about the other 364, man, but you're gonna lose that one day, man, and that's all you've got. You gotta call that love, man. That's what it is, man. If you got it today you don't want it tomorrow, man, 'cause you don't need it, 'cause as a matter of fact, as we discovered in the train, tomorrow never happens, man. It's all the same fucking day, man.”