Category: Music

Posted on

I finti fiori

I went to the garden after the rain.  The tiny blue petals of dayflowers seemed more resplendent than usual.  Their vines and leaves spread on the grounds, stretching beyond the edge of the terrace.  Considered “noxious” and “invasive” by many, they are welcome guests in my garden.

I first encountered these small jewels when I was in high school.  One day I saw a patch of dayflowers sprawled along a ditch on the roadside.  The color of the flowers caught my eyes.  I was also amused by the smallness of them.

Our school was in the suburb of Taipei on a hill near the National Palace Museum.  Every year, as courtesy, we were invited to visit the Museum.  There, I found dayflowers on a handscroll among other “auspicious” species: peonies, lotus, hydrangea, magnolia, and the like.  I was mesmerized by the vividness of the image.  At the same time, the irony of roadside weeds becoming a treasure and being displayed at a Museum also didn’t escape me.  There is only a thin line between arts and reality.

When I began building a garden on our terrace a few years ago, I was surprised to see dayflowers popping up at one corner.  Effortlessly they connected my parallel lives on two sides of the ocean; my past and present.  I saw myself standing in the gallery, fixating at the painted flowers.

I love flowers.  Watching them fade and wither away saddens me.  I am not good at keeping their images with paint brushes.  I was good at making silk flowers in my teen years: cutting leaves and petals out of ribbons; bending them by hand or pressing them with hot iron; and wrapping them onto wires.  Petal by petal; leaf by leaf; stem by stem; beautiful flowers would grow out my hands.  The exuberant dyes made them more vivacious then the real ones.

I loved making peonies.  They were flowers that I only read in classic literature. They were flowers that I only saw in paintings and photos.  With ribbons, I could bring them into reality.  Out of my fingers, amazing things happened.

These days, I grew peonies in my garden: classical crimson ones and pale pink “Mrs. F. D Roosevelt.”  In late spring, the buds gradually grow rounder and fuller.  As they quietly unwrap, gentle fragrances fill the air.  And, I know that they will come back year after year.

“Ma i fior ch’io faccio, ahimè!
Non hanno odore. . .”

“But the flowers that I make, alas!
Don’t have fragrance. . .”
Mimì in Puccini, La Bohème, Act 1

YouTube: “A Collection of Spring Fortune” 春祺集錦 by Wang Chengpei 汪承霈, Qing dynasty.
The brocade handscroll mentioned in the post is housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Posted on

Middle C

This entry is part 2 of 17 in the series Guiding Hands

The Wu family lived across a narrow alleyway from our backdoor.  The daughter was a few years older than me.  She was lanky and of a demure elegance, perhaps inherited from her Japanese mother.  I went to their house with mom occasionally.

On one of these occasions, I saw her playing the piano.  I don’t have any recollection of how and what she was playing.  Curiosity and envy, however, drove me to ask mom for piano lessons.  Mom tried ignoring me first.  Then, she tried telling me how difficult it would be.  Eventually, we visited the neighborhood piano teacher Ms. Lee.  She told me to wait till after I turned four.  We waited.

The first thing she taught me was to find that note in the center of the keyboard.  For several days, I went to her place, climbed up the bench and found that note near the key hole.  I played “Middle C” repeatedly until it was time to go home.

Then I moved on with rudimentary instructions.  In those days, the common (and the only) piano method book for children was a simplified version of Elementary Instructions by Ferdinand Beyer.  Divided in two volumes, it might have been adapted from a Japanese edition.  There were color drawings on every page.  In comparisons to the modern method books, it progressed much faster.

Ms. Lee taught me to always count as I played.  Even now, I can hear her counting next to me.  She was also careful with my hands.  Mom would observe my lessons and sit with me when I practiced at home. . . She continued doing that for many years.

I was very good at copying what I heard.  My hands were tiny, but my fingers were agile.  Reading and following what’s on the page was another matter altogether.  If I learned something wrong the first time, it was almost impossible to erase my muscle memories.  Within a few years, I began to fight with mom daily at the piano.

Was it my pride?  Or, was it destiny?  I refused to stop playing the piano.  For whatever reason, mom also allowed me to continue with the lessons.

Who would have thought that I would one day study musicology, dedicating my time to revealing the truth on every page of score?  Who would have thought that I would one day become a coach, guiding singers to reproduce composers ideas faithfully?

I give thanks to mom for indulging me and for her patience sitting through my practices.  I give thanks to Ms. Lee for opening the door to music for me.  And, a big salute to Middle C.