Out with the old.......In with the new

A few months ago I took this intense writing course with Belinda Smith and wrote lots of songs about things I had never thought of before, like writing a song about an object.  The object came to me very quickly, but the writing turned in a direction that made me ponder on how we easily discard the old for the new.  I wrote about my grandmother's piano, the one that was center stage in her living room which was full of furniture hand carved and crafted by my grandfather.  When I was little, I always looked longingly at that piano, and desperately wanted to play it properly, but every time I climbed up on the too large piano seat and put my small hands on the keys, I was very plainly told not to "bang" on grandmother's piano.  I didn't think I was banging, but in reality, I probably was, and she loved that piano.  Of course part of the fascination for me was that it was not only a piano, but a pianola, which was a version that played music by itself with rolls of old yellowed paper, with holes in it that were the notes, and it rolled around and played magically by itself.  I was a very big fan, and my biggest wish was to learn to play those ivory keys.  When she died, I never did know where that piano went, but I would have walked a million miles for it to have sat in my living room.

I never did learn as a child, and am still trying to co-ordinate both hands together as an adult.  I mastered guitar, I plan to do the same with piano even if I am eighty.  As I thought about the piano, my mind wandered to other things.  The theatre where I performed my first professional role at the age of seventeen, aptly named "Her Majesty's Theatre", situated in Queen Street in my hometown of Brisbane.  You could smell the grease paint, and see the rodents that roamed those ancient hallways and dressing rooms that were freezing in winter and hot as hades in summer.  No air conditioning, no sound systems in a three thousand seat theatre, but so much atmosphere and history that I remembered arriving for call time dead tired, and just the smell of the place could make the blood rush through my veins.  I loved that old theatre, but it fell, demolished in a pile of dust and rubble to make way for "finer, newer" buildings that were more comfortable.  History gone forever in the name of progress.  I protested along with a lot of others whose lives and careers had been changed on that stage, but she came down nonetheless.  Shows moved to the "modern" theatre up on the hill that had a sound system and air conditioning, but not much atmosphere, or history for that matter.  But all in the name of progress.

My mind then turned to how music itself has changed drastically in such a short time.  What happened to EP's, and LP's and a small black round disk that was known as a "single".  I have one of those of myself singing in a radio competition at the age of fourteen.  I have it carefully put away for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren to know something of their "Grammy".  Of course I digitized it and have it stored on my I-Tunes, another leap in the music industry.  Soon, we will not even remember cd's, they will become like cassettes, if you remember those.  I still have an old turntable and my first four track recording system, my first DX7, and a pile of music I recorded way back then on a more than a few dats, and cassettes.  I still have a Dat Machine as well as sheet music from when I was learning singing at ten.  Those are old, and fragile, but memories I treasure.

Then of course my mind turned to the elderly, who we discovered while Roger's mum was in a nursing home at the end of her life, were very rarely visited by their families, and the children whose parents prefer a pill, or a bottle of ale over these precious little ones resulting in so many children in foster care. I could go on and on, but I'll let you remember your own precious things that have disappeared from life, some good, some bad, only time will tell.  I sure hope in twenty years we don't look back and think we were living in the good old days.  Here is the link, hope you enjoy:)
http://theadoptionthing.org/DustLeftOnMyCover.mp3