Songs From the Creaky Chair
Aug. 30th, 2013 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brian_campo in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
birthright_rpgIn a back corner of the UNLV student union, a baby grand sat unused and ever so slightly out of tune. In a display of misguided generosity, a housekeeper had set a basket of artificial ferns on it, lending an imitation of life. The fronds of that were dust-laden, too. Brian sat on the bench, which swayed under his weight, and lifted the cover to reveal the keys: white tinged yellow, black gone dull. He liked to tinker with it on Fridays when everyone left for the weekend. Nobody cared; in his jeans and ratty Mondale-Ferraro ‘84 t-shirt, he looked as much like a student as the next guy.
This instrument provided his only access to a full-sized piano. He enjoyed the chance to stretch his fingers and reach for notes at the far ends of the register. When he was alone at the piano, he thought a lot about being a kid, about learning to play. He remembered the monotony of practicing basic chords and scales, the certainty that he would never be taught anything more exciting than Little Brown Jug, and how his Supreme Ultimate Goal was the Peanuts theme song. Later, the pride of his first “grown-up song”, Beethoven’s Bagatelle in A Minor, Op. 59, and the thrill of figuring out that he didn’t have to wait for sheet music – he could make up songs. And so “Brian’s Brains in D Minor” was born.
Over the years, he had written many more, some for the Fraying Nerves, some for himself. The most recent was called, predictably, “Hands Gone Ape-Shit.” He hunched his shoulders and picked out the melody.
[Thread: Open to Julianna]
This instrument provided his only access to a full-sized piano. He enjoyed the chance to stretch his fingers and reach for notes at the far ends of the register. When he was alone at the piano, he thought a lot about being a kid, about learning to play. He remembered the monotony of practicing basic chords and scales, the certainty that he would never be taught anything more exciting than Little Brown Jug, and how his Supreme Ultimate Goal was the Peanuts theme song. Later, the pride of his first “grown-up song”, Beethoven’s Bagatelle in A Minor, Op. 59, and the thrill of figuring out that he didn’t have to wait for sheet music – he could make up songs. And so “Brian’s Brains in D Minor” was born.
Over the years, he had written many more, some for the Fraying Nerves, some for himself. The most recent was called, predictably, “Hands Gone Ape-Shit.” He hunched his shoulders and picked out the melody.
[Thread: Open to Julianna]