Play & Book Excerpts
Fly, My Darling
(She Writes Press)
© Lisa K. Richter
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1. She stands behind the screen door in the muted light of a cottage shaded beneath banana palms, watching me walk toward her down a short concrete drive. The cottage is tucked within a pod of small beach homes; dense leaves press its green clapboard exterior, wrapping it in more green. A cocoon, I think, eyeing it for the first time. A vast blue sky, a birdsong afternoon. The air rich with beached sea kelp, salt. When she steps out in jeans and a white tee, a pencil behind her ear, her smile is magnanimous. “Hey there. I’m Lynda.” She extends a hand. “You must be Lisa.” Inside, she tidies a composition in progress spread atop a Baldwin grand. In a small side alcove with insulation squares tacked to walls, a double-wide monitor sits above an electronic keyboard, stacks of CDs tower near a standing mic. “Please have a seat.” She gestures to a deep leather chair backed against a shelving unit overflowing with music scores and books. A matching sofa in the same worn golden leather and a low pine table fill out the room. She sits on the piano bench facing me. From the dove-white wall behind her, a framed oil of fiery hues glows. “Where shall we begin?” she says. 2. I studied classical piano in spurts for some thirty-seven years. Mrs. Wiley was the first. Arriving at our house Thursdays before dinner, she sat next to me at the antique upright my mother found through an ad in the Baltimore Sun and purchased for $60. Mrs. Wiley, with her shiny fingernails and her grandmother voice that never scolded, her repeated exclamations at the aromas wafting from my mother’s kitchen, and if it happened to be roast chicken, which it often was on Thursdays, questioning again what made it smell so good, to which I at age seven again and again responded: rosemary. There followed more serious classical study through high school. Then after a twenty year pause: Wayne, Madeline, and John, classical concert pianists. 3. At forty-four, it was time for a new approach, a freer way. “Call my friend, Lynda,” my son’s clarinet teacher told me when I mentioned I’d like to try jazz. “I’ve known her twenty years. She’s the one.” 4. She slides off the bench, gestures for me to take her place. “Would you play something?” I begin the dramatic opening of Beethoven’s Pathétique (the French title translating, notably, as both poignant and pathetic), a composition in classical three-part sonata form. “Okay,” she says. “That’s good!” Not meaning that it is good, but that it is enough. Hands in my lap, I turn to face her. She nods but her body tells all: Beethoven? 5. What is it you want? he pressed me over the years, the man I’d spent half my life with, What? I didn’t have an answer, how could I? It was so big, so much. When I asked him, What do you want, what? he took a sheet of lined paper and a blue ink pen and swiftly listed his items, one, two, three, clicked the pen to retract the ink, dropped it onto the sheet and looked at it as if to say, Yes, that’s it. So easy really. 6. “Why don’t we start here?” She opens a thick, spiral-bound book of jazz standards to “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” The musical page is nearly empty. A single note melody line runs beneath clusters of letters and numbers: C7, D9, Eb dim. I have no idea what to do. “Chord suggestions,” she says. She smiles. 7. “You never are satisfied,” he tells me. “You can have ninety percent of what you want, and still focus on the missing ten percent.” We are walking around the neighborhood—a quiet, gated enclave, manicured, lush with trees. He begins to sprint without me. Okay. Maybe true. But if that ten percent is the critical amount . . . if what is missing is intangible . . . emotional connection, true intimacy . . . then what? 8. In the classical realm, perfection is attained by performing a piece as the composer intended. It is all there: each note, phrase, tempo detailed. One knows what one has to do. The difficulty is in the precision, the adherence to the written score. In jazz, I learn, one needs to challenge the expected, embrace an unscripted page. Its freedom demands an intuitive sense, an unrelenting trust that any sound can be musical. 9. The mission: Take a simple idea and explore it, using everything you’ve learned (not nearly enough), and in real time build tone and rhythm, and birth something authentic, moving, beautiful even. 10. My fingers search for the right notes. “Let go . . .” she says, standing at my side. “I’m trying.” She joins me on the bench. Eyes steady on my face, her hands sound a series of melodic, cascading chords. “Don’t try. Think only of where you want to land.” She plays another run of chords, lingering on the final one. “Like the end of a sigh.” |
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Lisa K. Richter is an American writer and poet. She is the author of Fly, My Darling, a love story and intimate lyrical memoir, and Searching for the Talisman, an online essay series inspired by a classic 1929 Italian cookbook. Her poems, essays, and stories have been featured in journals, anthologies, and literary blogs. A poetry alumna of the Community of Writers, she holds an MFA in fiction from Antioch University, earned her B.A. in mathematics from the University of Virginia, and, in 2002, founded a company teaching computer coding to young people.
Lisa grew up on the East Coast, lived years in Europe where her daughter and son were born, and now resides in southern California. Follow Lisa on:
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Lisa K. Richter
Photo Courtesy: Lisa K. Richter |
