The Piano

After many years of waiting and postponements a new object has eventually entered our apartment. To our children the arrival of the piano has been an event that compares to the arrival of their first bycicle or their first large size bed. It's been some kind of a family intimate cerimony.

I had always had in mind to start playing an instrument that I somehow felt more natural to me and that I never could afford before. I have loved and still love my guitars but for several reasons finding the right time for training on them has become more and more difficult in recent years. So I took the opportunity to buy a second hand piano with the excuse that my children were asking for one.

Some evenings this new family object turns into our family fireplace. We sit around it and, one after one or together, put the hand on its keyboard and attempt to improvise a tune that passes through our minds. I have discovered again the allure that the white and black keys make on a young kid, as I was forty years ago.

I couldn't believe how much classical music still attracts a young boy's or girl's attention. Beside playing, I have seen my kids' growing attention to those CDs that had nowever been covered by dust. And it's really amazing to stare at my son as he sits at the piano and repeats the same passage several times, careless of the hours that pass by.