November 21, Another kind of love

ancient sun

When we got the FaceTime connection my piano teacher appeared like a magician's illusion and took me by surprise. Her black hair quickly wrapped in a chignon, a gray vest of asymmetric collar kept in place by an oversized button, red. Thin silver rimmed glasses next to which the earphone cables looked like old fashioned eye-ware chains. Behind her, on the piano, piles of books. Yellow walls covered in prints, a lovely small room where everything seemed within reach.

It felt like we were sharing a room, closely. The sentiment perdured even as we had to fiddle with equipment so that she may see my hands and, thankfully, correct my physical approach of the instrument.

I believe the most fortunate of students are those who had the chance to be taught by people they adored. Forget the 10000 hours of practice as the road to fame and riches. I choose my words knowingly, for this has been one of the most enviable chances I was granted. To be taught, especially when young, by people I adored. Foreign languages, painting, Latin. At the university, a few professors whose knowledge I admired, if from far. Now, miraculously, my piano teacher. I say miraculously because one does not expect to experience again such emotions as are the privilege of childhood and young age.

Why is it important that one be in the throws of love in the presence of one's teacher? I am sure the answer presents itself readily. There are teachers who hand out, just like handouts, some form of knowledge, that which we call today information. And there are those rare encounters where the teacher entrusts her or his pupils with secrets more precious than knowledge. The secret is, again, out in the open. And yet, not for everybody to grasp. Knowledge without affect, without some measure of tenderness, admiration, love, which teacher and pupil alike may share, has no value.

Curiously, what I remember most vividly about the first three teachers I have named is their hands. I must have spent a lot of time watching them. Seventy year old, sixty- and thirty-something old hands. The age did not seem to matter. All such beautifully expressive hands; the first two, I imagined then, because of spending so much time writing; the third, because of drawing. The manner in which they held the pencil - they used mechanical, metal pencils to write in those days - witnessed, in my mind, to the wealth of their knowledge. As for drawing, nothing could equal the elegance of her holding le charbon, while doing esquisses.

I of course also adored my mother's hands. For wholly different reasons: do hair,  caress, make gifts, embrace. Her marvelous lips seemed to kiss even when smiling.

It is a common misconception that teaching has something to do with transference. Students would transfer some of the feelings they hold for they parents upon their teachers. I hope this is a misconception only, for my experience would then indicate that students either love their parents very little, or hate them a great deal. If this were true, then I would have had to put up with a lot of misdirected affect. For my own salvation, I prefer to think that the admiration, or rather adoration, as I like to call it, of the teacher, has to do with love of a different kind. Love for what the teachers know lovingly; or, we love them, because they tell us about the love they hold for the object of their teaching. We come together in the hope that we, too, will get to experience that feeling. Otherwise, what good would have been my love affair with Latin, a language which I never used otherwise than to hold in my heart?

My piano teacher has, of course, beautifully expressive hands. Their beauty only revealed to those fortunate enough to take lessons with her, and see her play. For such is the secret of this kind of beauty. Not apparent to whomever, whenever, but immediately obvious to she who would like to join in that kind of knowledge. Again, the word is not appropriate. These hands know, indeed, marvelous things, which came to them down the river of time. They repeat gestures which may have been deployed by somebody hundreds of years ago. The words we use today, hardly generous in describing the miracle of communication with those who came before us: transmission we say, as if speaking about a radio cast. I like to think of that communication, rather, as something akin to our relationship to the sun.

Be that as it may, and even if we were to use the word transmission, I am unendingly thankful to receive such gifts as those devised by Bartok, with whom we consort through the graceful teachings of my long distance medium and teacher; or by Schubert, and the wonder of these other, all knowing, superb old hands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Ak7Tk9B3s