One More Thing...
Carnegie Hall, Here I Come
by Ken Graham
My parents tortured me when I was a child. As soon as I was capable of hoisting myself up onto a piano stool, I was forced – against my will – to take piano lessons. Once a week I was delivered to some horrible woman’s house and commanded to play scales until my little aching hands were nearly numb. At home, I would be locked in the dark closet they called a music room and forced to practice for hours on end. The metronome sitting atop the piano, with its evil little metal arm swinging back and forth, felt like a sledge hammer inside my tiny unformed brain. I was deprived of food and water until late hours of the night, before they finally let me out.
I was only given reprieve from the piano when I reluctantly agreed to switch to the trombone in the fourth grade. What a mistake that turned out to be. At least you don’t have to carry a piano to school. We lived at the bottom of a hill that was several miles long, and the school bus stop was at the top. If you look at me and you think my right arm seems longer than my left, now you know why. I’m sure that at least three of my grade school classmates are permanently crippled because they made the mistake of letting their knees hang into the aisle of the bus while I was passing by. It’s impossible to be cool when you’re carrying a trombone case. Believe me, I tried.
The emotional scars from my musical upbringing are just now beginning to fade - which is why I’m finally able to talk about it. This is also why I’ve been thinking recently that maybe I should try taking up an instrument again. I’ve actually been harboring a fantasy of sitting around a campfire with my friends, nimbly strumming my guitar and leading a rousing rendition of “Michael Row Your Boat Ashore”.
It seems to me now that, despite common wisdom to the contrary, learning a musical instrument as a middle-aged adult makes a lot more sense than learning one as a child. Sure, my calcified brain will make it very difficult to be any good at it, but look at the advantages: I only have to practice when I feel like it; no crusty old junior-high band director will be yelling at me for hitting girls in the butt with my trombone slide (yes, I was charming even back then); I don’t walk to bus stops anymore.
I recently saw the comedian Steve Martin playing the banjo on TV, and he’s really good. So I decided, how hard could that be? Banjo it is. In a matter of weeks, I thought, I’ll be amusing my friends as I pluck away effortlessly at “The Beverly Hillbillies” theme.
This fantasy collapsed quickly, of course. I read somewhere that it takes at least 1,000 hours of practice to become even moderately proficient at the banjo. (I guess big-time TV and movie stars have more free time than I thought.) I was figuring on maybe putting in a couple of half-hour sessions a week (I’ve got other things to do too, you know), which means I’ll be older than Granny by the time I can play her song. And then, when I brought up my banjo plan to a friend, she asked if I’d ever seen the movie “Deliverance”.
I think I’ll just go over to my mother’s house and listen to her play the piano. Unlike me, she stuck with it and she’s good.