Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Working on simple stuff: Minuets in G major and G minor, from the Anna Magdalen notebook (bum, dum dum dum dum, bum bum bum), memorized at 50-60BPM—in the Bach book but actually Christian Petzold. And Oscar Peterson Minuet 3, also memorized, and Tune-Up by Miles Davis (it's not actually by him; I can't remember who). Some of this is going back to basics by mutual agreement—much of my study involves single, circled words pencilled at the top of the page.

TEMPO

THUMB

I play about as well as a talented seven year old. You could say that I am improving but it doesn't really register like that. It is more like,

• I am no longer shocked by how bad I am.

• I am aware of what happened when I was supposed to land on the E with third finger.

• I am not good at the contract, expand chord motion on the right hand.

• I have trouble with the intervals in the walking bass in my left hand.

I get so jealous of my teacher. I go over there, trudging through the snow, and take off my shoes, and he's already at work. His work is piano. He's my age. He's probably taught 25,000–30,000 lessons. Each one has a little narrative. First we do Hanon. He's very professional and we chat amiably about kids and schools in the neighborhood but there's no expectation aside from that I will attend, and Venmo.

He takes my intent seriously though. After a lifetime of putting on a business show, selling the sizzle, doing my interdisciplinary jazz hands, it has taken me a long time to accept that progress will be only incremental, and not just incremental but fractional, not just fractional but a derivative, we are calculating a slope here. And it can't be sped up. You can't make a half-century-old brain into an ambidextrous sight-reader. In about five years I will probably be able to play a little Chopin or some nice pop tunes without spaghetti fingers spilling all over the keyboard.

I'm about to go into work and discuss how we'll market the platform once some of the integration tasks are complete. What are you doing today, I ask? Friends are coming over to rehearse tango, he says. His apartment is warm and filled with sheet music and books and a baby grand stacked with manuscripts. He composes.

I know I did not waste my life, those meetings were important.

It's not like I could play piano anyway.

So. Today was pretty good. We're about to put some Bach to bed. I have a plan for the week. We've adjusted goals a little bit, to get the fundamentals shored up. You have to decide whether you're humiliated or not. Most of the time I decide that I am.