Piano Movers - Dec 25 2025

 

Piano Movers

Dec 25 2025

I never practiced.

If we are the musical animal

then I am still a savage beast.

(Which was originally breast, but never mind).

I clearly lacked aptitude

let alone passion.

All I recall from those years of lessons

was sitting sullenly in the car

with my overwhelmed mother

utterly unprepared, 

my teacher’s barely contained frustration,

and a picture on her wall —

a painting of a racing yacht

with sporty men

hiking out.

How did they do that

what if they slipped?

Clearly, I preferred salt spray in my face

and a steady wind

over a dim stuffy room,

her disapproving glare,

and a dark brown upright

that left me feeling at sea;

its unfathomable expanse

of black and white keys

about to pull me under.

Back then

in an upwardly mobile world

pianos were like furniture

in houses big enough to hold them,

and a child learning to play

was a common aspiration of the middle class.

To expand his notion

of what was possible beyond suburbia?

To make him well-rounded

       . . . respectable

                 . . . ambidextrous?

Or to enable him to entertain 

at the drop of a hat

at cocktail parties and piano bars?

The popular kid

whom everyone gathers around.

Needless to say, I can’t.

I did learn to sail, however,

and am proud to say

I can at least navigate the keyboard

well enough

to find middle C.

So while I’d love to be able to plunk out a tune

I know by heart

with nimble hands,

I sadly missed my chance.

And now, you can’t give an old piano away,

must pay someone 

to cart it to the dump.

So the piano movers are doing OK,

or at least as long as their backs hold out

and the old instruments last.

But not so much

the middle class.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

This well-known quote is often attributed to Shakespeare. That’s what I always thought. But in fact, it comes from William Congreve’s tragedy The Mourning Bride (1697), Act I, Scene I. Either way, I’m impressed anyone can write a line that’s still widely referenced almost 3 1/2 centuries later.

Was breast simply misspelled over the years, eventually dropping the r? Or was it bowdlerized by proper pearl-clutching Victorians: averting their eyes from a scandalous reference to an intimate body part?!!

(Bowdlerize, btw, from the physician and editor Thomas Bowdler who in the late 18th/early 19th centuries prudishly edited Shakespeare to remove profanity, sexual references, and violence. All of which there is more than you’d imagine in the revered playwright’s works. Clearly, Shakespeare knew what it took to put bums in seats in the venerable Globe!) 

The painting was real, the singular memory accurate:  I didn’t confect this just so I could have fun with the nautical metaphor. The metaphor came after. And really, I can’t even remember the teacher’s name. Just the painting (which clearly impressed me), the feeling (which remains unpleasant), and — of all things! — the street:  Aldershot Crescent. Memory, a strange beast indeed!