Pianoforte

Music is what feelings sound like. 

~Author Unknown

Disclaimer: This post contains unmitigated fawning over my first born.  I don’t do this often, but a certain joy embedded in my blog is that I’ll not see your eyes roll as I pride in my progeny.

Occasionally, stars align and I find myself alone with Mia during our drive to school.  Like other things too scarce, these twenty minutes are treasure.

Mia’s two and a half years older than her brother, and her brother is the eldest of all our students.  Conversation with her, you can imagine, exists on a slightly different plane.

This morning, I formally introduced her to the musical stylings of Nirvana.  ”What’s Nirvana,” she asked.  ”It’s like Heaven,” I said, “but easier to get to.”

I love music.  

I thank my parents for permeating childhood with a ton of tunes.  We didn’t have a whole lot of diversity; they pretty much dug deep on classic rock, but they loved what they listened to, attended concerts with semi-frequency, and dribbled their affection down to me.

I love it all.  I’ve a soft spot for the classics of course, but my mac’s packed with 80 gigs, jamming everything from Marshall Mathers to Mozart.

My singing voice is terrible.  Really, at my best, I sound like a love sick moose.  Despite this, I have a decent ear for pulling apart the various sounds in a track.  

Mia puts my skills to shame.  At two and a half, all on her own, she started to identify composers off the classical station in the car.  

“What’s that?”  Mia asked this morning, while listening to one of Cobain’s quieter numbers.  I had to back the track six times to hear what she did:

Dave Grohl, lightly tapping his drumstick on a tightened cymbal in composed momentum.  

A few minutes from her school, I explained how Nirvana were BIG TIME when I was in high school.  

Why?

Because they had a new sound.

“What did it sound like?”

I bounced the track to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and played the first minute.  

We turned onto her school’s street.

That’s not a new sound, she said. That’s pianoforte. 

Pianoforte: ORIGIN mid 18th century ‘soft and loud,’ expressing the gradation in tone.

Yes, Mia, that’s correct.  Nirvana is a wonderful example of pianoforte.  

We kissed and she ran from the car to her first grade classroom.  Again, I thought how lucky we are that she’s in a class that is challenging.

Later on, conversation resumed.  Our words drifted to the life, and tragic end of Kurt Cobain.  It was a beautiful conversation, and I would love to share, but I think I’d like to save it for another week.

Before I bid you all a wonderful weekend, I’d like to first say WOW!

Tuesday’s post, Stop, and Wednesday’s follow up, I Said Stop, were quite the surprise.  Originally, I was going to post about the power of praise, but an early evening incident inspired a change.

I just want to say, I’ve never been more proud of this audience.  I’m inspired by what happened here this week, and believe it will affect my writing.  There was genuine dialogue, and though we never did get any answers from Benjamin, there’s always tomorrow.  

I can’t wait to comb the comments again this weekend; slowly, with Daisy next to me, inch upon inch of intelligent argument like candy for my mind.  Thank you all, for all your words.  First time through, these are the commenters who struck me in some way, or pushed our discussion further.

Blogger Dad, Matthew, Dave Fowler, Ian, Wendi, KittyTown (love ya), Jamie, Kool Aid, Janine, Kimmelin, Melissa, Miguel, Jim, Blake, and BJ.  Special mention to my dad, who dropped his first comment ever. (I know, right?)

Thank you all.  See you Monday.

Writer Dad

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