{"id":360,"date":"2024-11-04T11:53:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T11:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/?post_type=episode_posts&p=360"},"modified":"2025-01-07T09:01:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T09:01:22","slug":"episode-2-manifesting","status":"publish","type":"episode_posts","link":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/?episode_posts=episode-2-manifesting","title":{"rendered":"Episode 2: Manifesting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manifesting\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In the months before my fiftieth birthday, I was given the dream again, and again and again. I believe I started to have the dream before Ronald arrived, having left Kosovo with its war and aftermath and driven slowly through Macedonia, Greece and Italy and back to Thonon-les-Bains on Lac Leman.\u00a0 I know I had it again when he was back and beside me when I woke up.\u00a0 I shared it with him.<\/p>\n

It was autumn 2000 and we had been together for 18 years.\u00a0 Well, not in the same place at the same time but we had been \u2018in relationship\u2019 with a good sense of each other\u2019s priorities.\u00a0 Ronald was a good listener.\u00a0 He listened carefully and intently, and he respected dreams, often fascinated and awed by his own \u2013 remembered and reflected on.<\/p>\n

Quietly: \u2018You need a piano?\u2019\u00a0 I nodded.\u00a0 \u2018You haven\u2019t really played during the eighteen years I have known you\u2026’\u00a0 This was true.\u00a0 In 1988, depressed, I had felt a deep need to reconnect with my music, and my mother packed up my grandmother\u2019s 1901 Bechstein piano and shipped it from Port Elizabeth to her beloved desperate daughter in Nyon, Switzerland.\u00a0 But by 1989 I was swept up with my work in Tanzania and merely caressed\u00a0 the piano between missions….\u00a0 until 1994.\u00a0 And in 1995 the piano made another outrageous ocean crossing back to Cape Town.<\/p>\n

\u2018Yes, Ronald.\u00a0 I do need a piano\u2019. He looked around our third floor walk-up loft apartment.\u00a0 His eyes showed concern. Not much wall space to fit a piano against, and he suggested a digital keyboard upstairs in the kitchen\/dining area.\u00a0 \u2018No, it\u2019s a real piano. A grand piano\u2019.\u00a0 So, I proceeded to map out exactly where my future piano would be, sticking down masking tape in a perfect outline.\u00a0 And there it was, flat on the floor:\u00a0 a 1.8 meter long grand piano.\u00a0 No more debate. Life could continue.\u00a0 Ronald\u2019s office area intact, we could get to cupboards, bookshelves and our desks. It would be fine.\u00a0 It just needed to manifest.<\/p>\n

It was now November 2000, and the fog lay thickly on the lake.\u00a0 Ronald was once again based somewhere else \u2013 Brussels \u2013 and I had started dreaming my piano.\u00a0 The message had gone out to the universe:\u00a0 BECHSTEIN, GRAND, OLD!\u00a0 The masking tape outline remained in place for a total of three months.\u00a0 I took to walking around it, not over it or \u2018bumping into\u2019 it.\u00a0 It began to assume volume and became almost solid. I could almost feel its presence and placed a piano stool in the correct place \u2013 my hands poised in mid-air \u2013 eyes closed, alone.\u00a0 In Silence!<\/p>\n

I realise now that the act of visualising a desired outcome in as much detail as possible is key to its manifestation \u2013 and, the piano found me the week before my fiftieth birthday through a series of serendipitous happenings.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

On Christmas Eve 2000, my close friend Beth\u2019s husband died after a long struggle.\u00a0 He had returned from hospital and they shared their final family meal at home.\u00a0 A fortnight later I went up to be with her in Leysin, the mountain village where she lived.<\/p>\n

That week I had put out the word of my intention to find a Bechstein, asking my friend Iris and her father, a collector of old pianos and oriental carpets,\u00a0 to keep eyes and ears open in Geneva. I had also scheduled a bodywork treatment session with Iris, which now coincided with my being in Leysin.\u00a0 So, I called her to reschedule.<\/p>\n

Well. \u00a0Iris was breathless.\u00a0 She had been calling me and leaving messages in Thonon.\u00a0 It was urgent.\u00a0 A 1923 Bechstein grand was to be advertised the next morning in Geneva.\u00a0 A family friend, widowed.\u00a0 Her husband had owned and played the piano for twenty-eight years.\u00a0 Madame Pahud was willing to offer me a preferential price as a friend of Iris\u2019s.\u00a0 But I needed to call immediately!\u00a0 It was already after 9pm and a Wednesday.<\/p>\n

I called in French. \u00a0I was also breathless.\u00a0 And when I speak French I know that I sound young… and breathless. It was arranged.\u00a0 We would need to get to Geneva the next morning as early as possible, as madame would be fielding responses to the advert.<\/p>\n

Beth, now a partner in this unfolding and exciting drama, drove the two hours on the autoroute and we were there soon after ten.\u00a0 We climbed the stairs to the first floor flat where a huge black piano dominated the study.<\/p>\n

And yes, I touched it, used the pedal and saw the keyboard mechanism shift in one movement to the left. It just moved!\u00a0 I was alarmed:\u00a0 was the piano OK?\u00a0 I called Iris\u2019s brother, a jazz musician, and could hear the smile in his voice.\u00a0 \u2018Have you never played a grand piano?\u2019\u00a0 No, never ( except for one time in London… but that was in desperation… and I wasn\u2019t aware of the piano).\u00a0 Well, this was a wonderful piano and if he had more space, he would have snapped it up. So…<\/p>\n

I sat back and caressed the keys.\u00a0 There were marks on the panel below the letters Bechstein <\/em>written in gold, above the actual notes, where monsieur Pahud\u2019s fingernails must have tapped repeatedly and worn away the varnish. He clearly played often and in the middle register.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t make much sound.\u00a0 Madame Pahud might have been surprised\u00a0 \u2013 but didn\u2019t show it\u2013\u00a0 that I was taking this magnificent piano without putting it through any paces.\u00a0 But I knew it felt right.\u00a0 And, besides, apart from a few fragments which gave me a sense of the beautiful resonance and vibration, I didn\u2019t have much else to offer.<\/p>\n

It was decided.\u00a0 I was exhuberant as we drove back to Leysin. \u00a0We might have celebrated with a lunch on the way home.\u00a0 I don\u2019t recall, but that would have been our style. \u00a0Ronald was returning the next afternoon from Brussels, coming home for the weekend.\u00a0 Then he would come back again in a fortnight for my fiftieth birthday. \u00a0I had found my piano, or it had found me, in time for this milestone.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

From the airport, I drove Ronald straight to Madame Pahud in Geneva.\u00a0 We had a wad of large notes in an envelope, and I handed this over before he could voice what showed in his facial expression.<\/p>\n

\u2018How on earth is this piano going to get into our apartment?\u2019<\/p>\n

We lived in Thonon-les-Bains, on the French side of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva) looking across the lake to Switzerland. \u00a0The piano\u2019s new home was in a small medieval hamlet at the port, with an eleventh century castle nearby and a funicular linking the port with the little town on the hill above. \u00a0Rue du Funiculaire is the address, but \u2018ruelle\u2019 would have been more accurate as it is an extremely narrow and steep, one-way access road with building fronts opening directly onto the road.<\/p>\n

So how the piano was going to get into our apartment was a very good question since we lived in a three-hundred-year-old building, on the third floor.\u00a0 Stone stairs rose between the floors without mid-way landings and with a few stairs curving at top and bottom of each floor.\u00a0 Doorways to two apartments led off the landing on each of the first and second floors.\u00a0 Then there was the entrance to our apartment loft at the top.\u00a0 There was no alternative except for getting the piano up the stairwell.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Several days later I met the piano movers at the border with Switzerland to get papers stamped for importing my piano into France.\u00a0 I led the twenty kilometres or so, glancing in my rearview mirror.\u00a0 I had alerted the neighbours, and there were no cars parked against the facades of the old buildings where our small French cars were usually nestled at night. \u00a0The access road was just wide enough to reverse the small truck up as far as the front door to the threehundred-year-old building where we lived.<\/p>\n

I entered our building and stared up the stairwell, my heart racing. \u00a0How on earth was this going to happen? \u00a0I climbed the stairs, deliberately and very consciously.\u00a0 Conscious that soon there would be sweating and grunting and swearing in French. \u00a0The sounds of supreme effort would echo in this tall stairwell and enter into each apartment. \u00a0I knocked on the two doors on each floor to announce the piano\u2019s imminent arrival.<\/p>\n

In order to manouvre the piano around the corners and up the flights of stairs, at least part of its body needed to cross the threshold and enter each apartment.\u00a0 What an image: this great black beast establishing its territory greeting each neighbour before finally crossing the threshold into my life!\u00a0 It entered and was positioned perfectly over the masking tape, which I peeled off with due ceremony. \u00a0The piano stood proudly.\u00a0 There!\u00a0 Present!\u00a0 Perfect!<\/p>\n

I breathed out at last, looking at the three muscled men who had performed this miraculous ascension.\u00a0 \u2018If this piano was one centimeter longer?\u2019 I enquired quietly.\u00a0 The leader of the team shook his head emphatically.\u00a0\u00a0 JAMAIS! JAMAIS! JAMAIS!<\/p>\n

\u2018This will NEVER go DOWN those stairs again. EVER!\u2019<\/p>\n

One week later I crossed another threshold myself – turning fifty.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How a Bechstein 1923 piano found its way into my life in Thonon les Bains on Lac Leman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":367,"template":"","categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","episode_posts","type-episode_posts","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-part-2-music-and-my-soul"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/episode_posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/episode_posts"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}