An electronic keyboard can give you the power and the inspiration to do things you never, ever could do before. Placed in the hands of a musical dreamer, it is a dangerous thing.
You can lay down a piano track, solid and steady, a fitting foundation for that which will be built—track 1. You can smooth the surface with soft strings—track 2. You can embellish the bridge with a flute accent—track 3. You can fancy up the transition between the bridge and the final verse with a few bells—track 4. You can give the last verse a grand finale with a dash of piano and strings—track 5. You can bring in a trumpet—track 6, and then take out the trumpet because it really does not belong there.
That sense of building something spectacular from the ground up can be intoxicating. Over and over you can listen to your creation, awed by its beauty, proud as your mother used to be when she stood back to admire the elaborate wedding cakes she had created. Nobody ever really understood how Mom could put so much time, artisstry and effort into something she knew would presently be eaten. Keyboard music , to be sure, is not like wedding cake. It can be captured. The following day it will be there for you—OR so you think.
But the next day, puelled by a fire of pleasant anticipation, you can press the ON switch to discover that the previous day’s creation has vanished without a trace. or maybe only part of your creation has vanished, likely the foundational piano accompaniment on track 1. Perhaps you will never know how it happened. Maybe there was some warning on the screen that a blind musician cannot read, or maybe there is a clue buried somewhere in the multilingual instruction manual, Or maybe there are gremlins in the house. And you know you will never hear that song again, which makes its memory all the sweeter as the days pass by.
Common sense tells you to put that keyboard up for sale. It has disappointed you, diverted your attention from important things, wounded you deeply. You bought it secdon-hand and some other sucker will buy it from you. You lived without it before and you can live without it again. Don’t be sad. Get angry! It has no right to treat you this way!
I have known the pain of losing the beautiful music. Common sense bids me to get over my keyboard And yet, to my surprise, I persist. It would be one thing if I had never heard that music, but it is quite another to have heard it and lost it. You can’t just walk away pretending it never happened. Surely the options are not entirely exhausted. If the whole song has disappeared, then I can start from scratch. If only the foundation is gone, perhaps a new foundation can be wedged in somehow.
Today, as I prepare for my daily routine of summoning common sense while listening to others talk about the hurts and longings of past and current relationships, it occurs to me that I have been fooled into thinking I had bought a keyboard. I bought more than a keyboard. I bought a relationship with a keyboard, a relationship founded on hope, trust and the expectation of a future fruitful joy.
So maybe that explains why I just can’t wait to start the whole song-building process all over again, a little wiser, though not much wiser. Any counsellor worth her salt surely knows that Relationships which begin with hope, trust and the expectation of a future fruitful joy tend to be governed more by emotion and longing than by common sense. You see it over and over again. The people who have those thrilling-yet-disappointing relationships are willing to try a lot of things and not too ready to give up.
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