My earliest memories are of singing. My mom would play piano with my dad standing beside her as they practiced a duet they would be singing in church. The background music of Sunday mornings, as I buffed black shoe polish onto my church shoes, was vocal exercises and scales. There was always music in some form. I would fall asleep to the sound of the piano, or to the voice of Julie Andrews drifting down the hall with the glow from parts of the house where lights still burned.
My favorite time for music was when my dad returned from work in the evening, hugs scented with office cigarette smoke, and he would go to the piano and just play. One song I remember, the one I loved best, was an upbeat, jazzy rendition of the melancholy standard, "There Will Never Be Another You". I did not know the name of the song at the time. I just knew I loved hearing it, witnessing it being made, feeling the joy of its creation. For a while I really pestered him to “play that song again” every time he got home from work.
The frustrating thing was, when he did finally play the right song it was different somehow, and I would tell him, "That's not how you played it before." I attempted to explain what was different, trying to get him to recreate the earlier version just the way I remembered it, humming parts I thought he was playing wrong, making futile attempts to describe the difference with words: “It was faster,” or “it was jumpy,” or “it was happy not sad.” But the song was never the same because he had been improvising the first time, as he was every time after that. I fell in love with the first version I heard and wanted only that one. I did not understand why he could not just … recreate it.
Then one evening he came home with a surprise that filled the doorway, loomed over me, and seemed taller than he was. It was shrouded in a mysterious fabric cover. He excitedly removed the cover, unveiling a double bass, and started thumping away at it, playing scales or standard bass lines. Then he put a record on the “hi-fi” and played along with it. He had borrowed the bass for some reason that I do not recall so that one was to be only a fascinating visitor in our home. He had played stand-up bass in high school and college and I could see that he loved playing it. Years later he got a good price on a used one and from that point on a corner of our house was occupied by its imposing, almost human silhouette, waiting to be wrestled out of the house, bound for some big band gig or the orchestra pit.
When my father retired, he got to do something he seemed to love more than all his previous musical endeavors. He met a fantastic jazz guitarist named Bob Johnson, who had moved in across the street and who became a dear friend and brother in music. They played jazz together as a duo, my dad on bass and Bob on guitar, just for the enjoyment of playing together. Sometimes they formed trios with various amazing piano players, sometimes making it a quartet with a drummer. Then, for a few years, they were booked at various local venues and my dad was living a dream. That is the way retirement should be, and it would be wonderful if dreams continued once you find yourself in a dream you love, at least until you are ready for a new one. But that is not the way the song goes for any of us. Bob got sick, played less often, then not at all ... and then he was gone. And the big bass that accompanied my dad so often over the years started to seem more like a burden. It became more difficult to maneuver in and out of the house and van and he played it less often and then only occasionally. Time takes things, sometimes suddenly, but most of the time slowly. Attempts to keep things from changing, or to recapture what used to be, fail, like attempts to recreate an improvised arrangement of "There Will Never Be Another You".
“Relive” and “recreate” are sad words. They can only apply to something that has already ended and they promise something that cannot happen. It is the act of creating that makes the creator feel alive and acts happen in a fleeting present that, like a song, is passing even as it is being created. “Live” and “create”, on the other hand, crackle and spark. They can only apply to something that is or that can be, and they promise something that can happen.
When I was young and we would visit my grandparents, my brother and I would sleep on folding guest beds in my grandfather's office. In the corner of that office lived a smaller version of the shrouded shape that rested in a corner in our house. When it was time to sleep and the lights were turned out I did not like it crouching there. It was my grandfather’s cello in its dark cover. As the years went by, visit after visit, and as far as I know, in that corner it stayed. I never heard my grandfather play it, though I am told he played well.
When my grandfather died it came to my father and for a while it had a new corner in which to crouch. For a long time, it waited there. Eventually he sent it to a craftsman who did some minor repairs and declared it a fine instrument. In time my dad even found a teacher and took some lessons and made it sing after many years of silence. In his hands the cello sang out simple, beautiful, sad, baritone music. They have made music at church on Christmas Eve and Easter, they accompany my mom when her sore fingers allow her to play piano, or my brother and his wife, who play piano beautifully, or sometimes they accompany one of my kids, who were taught to play piano by my mom. There are no lofty aspirations, no claims of accomplishment or mastery. It is not even another dream come true. The important thing is they create music in a fleeting present that, like the music they are playing, is passing even as it is being created. And when they do that, they feel alive and happy, my father and his father's cello.
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