[1]<\/sup><\/a>, I began to feel the music deeply.\u00a0 It was, in fact, a recognition; the gypsy in my soul responded to echoes of the familiar in keys, rhythms, melodies and the rich discordant harmonies.\u00a0 I felt a deep emotional connection to these sounds.\u00a0 Prolonged exposure to them resulted in a particular pulsing and pulsation in the essence of my blood, was what it felt like.<\/p>\nAnd later, when music had found me again and I was actually playing myself, it was easy to connect with pianos in these places.\u00a0 I was traveling throughout Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary and Slovakia.\u00a0 It was as if their presence entered my field of knowing before I actually saw them.\u00a0 I could sense them.\u00a0 My awareness began to develop as I sought out pianos and found them, often in abandoned and empty buildings, showing signs and scars of conflicts.\u00a0 They would be hidden under sheets, under thick layers of dust from shelling and fallen plaster and pushed into corners \u2013 safely.\u00a0 Shaking off the dust, opening the covers and listening to their first vibrations as I touched the keys, I would wonder what they had been witness to\u2026 but in reality, not really wanting to know.<\/p>\n
The freezing winters that people in the Balkans region experienced during these unfathomable and inexplicable conflicts had compelled the burning of possessions.\u00a0 Heavy furniture, tables, chairs, beds, heirlooms, bookcases and even books had been the fuel for fires, light, and warmth.\u00a0 But pianos seemed to have been saved till last.\u00a0 The love of music which people in the region embody was evidenced by the presence of pianos, still there, in the empty spaces, after people had moved on to safety elsewhere carrying violins and instruments which could travel.\u00a0 These pianos survived.\u00a0 Silent sentinels.\u00a0 Witness to tragedies unbelievable and unbearable.\u00a0 They had perhaps also been compelled to hold their breath, as the world had done, when the horrors unfolded nightly across television screens.<\/p>\n
In the silence, I could almost feel them start to breathe even before I touched their keys and their sounds rang out echoing in the emptiness.\u00a0 And this was the surprising thing to me as I discovered the character and uniqueness of each piano.\u00a0 I would touch a single note, and for some reason it was often a black note which \u2018called\u2019\u00a0 itself into my awareness to be touched.\u00a0 I had my eyes closed and felt the initial sound moving out as a wave from under my finger.\u00a0 It circled out into the space around it, finding its way after the years of silence and solitude.\u00a0 And then a second note would sound,\u00a0 finding resonance with the first.\u00a0 Then the weaving and interplay of harmonics as the notes began their own dialogue.\u00a0 I was simply a catalyst, practically an observer.\u00a0 Indeed, it almost had nothing to do with me.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, the dialogue was close to unbearable \u2013\u00a0 as if the notes were sharing shocking memories, undergoing catharsis, purging and releasing.\u00a0 Terrible. Terrible to hear, and to actually feel emanating from the space under my own fingers.\u00a0 Dark memories.<\/p>\n
Nightmares. Turn the page!<\/p>\n
But sometimes, the sound coming from a particular piano offered a sense of grace, of dignity, of our humanity in the face of appalling outrage.\u00a0 This signature would ring out and I could feel it seeking other sound waves, holding the same resonance and hope-filled\u00a0 \u2013 merging together and building a sound field to be nurtured and harvested… some time in the future.<\/p>\n
A palette of black notes…<\/p>\n
[1]<\/sup><\/a> Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary and Serbia. Slovakia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Encounters with pianos throughout the Balkans region. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":365,"template":"","categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","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\/366","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\/365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mylisteningheart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}