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“...striking imagination and creativity.”

- Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

Granola :: 1.25.2008

The opening just wasn’t sounding right. Not enough staccato, not enough energy popping out of each note, and yet, not soft enough, never pianissimo enough. It would never be good enough, even though it would always get better, he told himself. His teachers had always emphasized the special power of time to gradually improve a piece. Though out of direct control, the piece would age like wine. Without a minute of practicing, a piece would soak in a rich marinade, so that when practiced again, it would allow the player to inch just a little closer to it. Performing a piece provides a similar enrichment—one teacher had hyperbolized that simply playing a work in public is equivalent to years of practicing it.
In any case, Alex was looking for a faster solution, and easy improvement in the difficult opening of this Sonata by Beethoven wasn’t making itself obvious. This artichoke wasn’t going to peel itself. Before another intensely concentrated dive into the nuts and bolts of the work, the best thing in such a moment was to step outside the practice room, and see about a productive distraction. John, the security guard who often monitored traffic out of the conservatory building, opened the door, and tossed a granola bar across the room to the young man on the piano bench, who did his best to catch it.
“Here, Alex, it’s already past 7, and I was gettin’ worried about you… and better you eat it than me, I put on at least 15 pounds over the holidays…”
The only response Alex could muster was an earnest smile before the door closed modestly behind the middle aged ex-marine. The man had an impossibly kind face… the kind that you can believe. If the man looked at the sky and said it would rain, best trust that you should wear a coat. He generally passed the time reading—sometimes, but not always, a bible—and who made a sporadic project of learning Russian—always to the muted strains of a small boom-box playing Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osborne with the volume turned paradoxically low.
He and Alex frequently spoke as the young pianist came and left the conservatory. Alex, at one time, had convinced him that one could ‘learn’ perfect pitch as one memorizes the names of colors…slowly but surely, John began to develop a sense of pitch in this way; by memorizing the names of familiar timbres of sound. In kind, John often spoke to Alex about his experiences.
“Thanks for the granola bar, man.”
John smiled and shrugged off the gesture.
“you know, I gotta say,” John started, “I gotta tell you, there’s one thing that bothers me about people… and you know, I try to have positive thoughts all the time, not to judge anyone, not to jump to conclusions…” he searched for the words he needed… “but there is one thing that forces me to judgment.”
“Well, sure it’s easy to judge on first impression… assessing superficial traits, whether looks or actions doesn’t matter much, I think, is all we have…”
“Yeah, sure, and that’s what I’m trying to say, I try to separate between how someone really is, you know, how they are inside, from how they appear to me, from what they say… but some people, what really aggravates me—and it’s just one type of person, as it boils down—it’s that guy who tries to be what he isn’t. It’s the guy who doesn’t know how to be, who doesn’t know himself, and so he imitates the image of what he thinks he should be…you know? So look at this: I mean, look at me, I look like Dennis the menace, I mean, I was the only Irish guy in an Italian neighborhood, and I had to fight my way to the corner store, every time… I mean, if I walked down the street with an ugly girl, sure nobody would bother me, but say my girlfriend is nice looking, guys are just hittin on her right in front of me, like they expect I can’t do anything about it, and I just have to stand back and laugh inside—if I don’t want to get in a fight every day of my life!—because they don’t know… they can’t know I was in the marine corps, and that I can hold my own. See what I can’t stand is the need to act tough, the whole look—you know what I mean, the Harley Davidson logo on the pickup truck, the chain wallet with the Harley logo on it, the whole deal, like acting a certain way, talking a certain way… when really, they haven’t actually served their country, haven’t actually put themselves to something with meaning… and they look at me, with my Dennis the menace looks… well, yeah! You don’t think so, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard…”
“I get told all the time I look like Harry Potter, I guess that’s about the same…” (Alex did, in fact, bear an uncanny similarity to the adolescent wizard)
“But see, that’s just how it is, and it’s up to me to show restraint, and not to let my own strength get the better of me… I mean, when the cops get there, you don’t want to have provoked anything! Let the other guy be culpable. I was just minding my own business, I say. Like take the other day: I go into my friend’s bar, where he works, and I’m just minding my own business, eating my boneless chicken wings, and drinking coke… you know, not the manliest of drinks, I mean, I don’t drink, and that’s just the way I am…but it gives off this impression… So, this guy, he’s there with a friend, he comes to me and says,” John deepens his voice and sinks his head deep into his neck and shoulders, with arms akimbo, “ ‘Yo, how bout Indy 08?!’ and I look up, like, what is this guy talking about? and I say, ‘Sorry, what was that?’ and he looks at me like I’m from Mars and says, ‘INDY 08, man!’ and I ask him again, quietly, what he’s talking about. He’s getting more and more agitated, and he says, ‘IND-I-AN-AP-OL-IS, man! The COLTS! FUCK yeah.’ At this point, I just lose it, and I look at him square and say, ‘I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.” And he steps back, looking at me worse than ever, saying, ‘man, you don’t need to get a fuckin ATTitude about it!’ strutting back to his table talking mumbling. So I just go back to my wings, and he’s quiet for a bit, but finally he says again, ‘man, I don’t know why you got to have a big fuckin attitude about it.’ Really testing my patience. I mean, thankfully, my friend is behind the bar, and he calls the guy out: he says, ‘Look, my friend is minding his own business eating his food, and you have no business bothering him. I’m gonna explain to you right now, so that he doesn’t have to, that he’s tougher than anyone you ever met before, and you don’t want to find that out yourself. My friends need to be able to come in here and mind their own business without people like you messin’ with ‘em. So now, it’s time for you and your friend to leave. And let me emphasize the now aspect of that statement.’”
“Wow, well it’s good your friend was there.”
“Yeah, cause I didn’t need to say anything myself… not that I would, I mean what’s the use, but seriously, he just said what I would hope anybody would say in that situation.”
“Sure, cause, he saved you from yourself, I guess. He saved you from feeling the temptation of needing to assert yourself, so you didn’t even have to deal with the question of what the right thing to do was versus what you probably wanted to do deep down.”
“Right… but you see, it’s people like that that just drive me to the edge… like they don’t know how to act themselves, so they take the idea of manhood from what they think it should be, like some idea of toughness… not even toughness, but aggression, really, and play it up, even if there’s nothing behind it.”
“Yeah it’s true.” The young pianist went back into his cave, thinking again of staccato and pianissimo and Beethoven, and how to lick that opening, how to get it out of himself the way he heard it somewhere in the horizons of his imagination... now an abstraction, a collection of shapes, feelings, instruments, thoughts, pulses and long lost energies, relics of times long past and flashes of moments still yet to come. “Thanks again for the granola bar, John, it should tie me over till I’m done just fine!”
“No problem… hey, see you later.”

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