Op 31, No. 2

I envy your visit to the steamy gray mists of Scottish winter. Conjures up wonderful, spirit-memories and wanderlust. No, no, I've never been. The memories are only ghosting in my genetic code – perhaps placed there by generations of Scots before me.

My mom certainly read me many book stories. I think she started reading to me before I actually arrived on the earth, and later, as I grew into a Real Live Girl, we cuddled in her rocker for hours as she read me tales of shoes and ships and sealing wax, introducing me to the world outside my pink painted room.

But her favorite thing (and of course mine, too) was to play me piano stories. (I've told you she had 2% hearing, haven't I? The closest thing to deaf-as-a-doornail.) Her passion was piano – classical and jazz – the bolder and more dramatic, the better. Sensible, I suppose, since her lack of hearing must have been like putting a soft pedal on everything. I learned the meaning of allegro tempestoso at a very tender age. She'd practice for as many hours as she could carve out of her abundantly busy life, but when frustration hit over a difficult passage, her fingers would invariably find a minor key and slide into a jazz riff – an all-out, stripper-hot version of “St. Louis Blues” her particular favorite.

As I sat on the mahogany piano bench with her, wrapped in her love and songs, she’d play, making up stories to fit the music's heat or fancy. Some pieces, like Cole Porter's, didn't need any new stories, just to be (perhaps) cleaned up a bit for a 10-year-old daughter. (I was in my late teens before I finally understood the real context of “It’s Too Darned Hot,” “Why Can't You Behave?” and “My Heart Belongs to Daddy.”) Other tunes got stories of castles and kings.

My particular favorite was a piece by Edward MacDowell, Op 31, No. 2. It's thundering and tumultuous music that changes mid-stream into an ethereal and tender air, then rolls back again to the boiling crescendo of a crashing sea. The story (which is printed on the sheet music) is:

Far and away on the rock coast of Scotland,
Where the old gray castle projecteth Over the wild raging sea,
There, at the lofty and arch-ed window,
Standeth a woman, beauteous, but ill,
Softly transparent and marble pale;
And she's playing her harp and she's singing,
And the wind through her long locks forceth its way,
And beareth her gloomy song Over the wide and tempest-tossed sea.

Well, as you know, the Scots are not usually overly cheerful people, so naturally when I was a child I thought this was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.



The piece remains my favorite, and is wholly responsible for my love both of mists and of boiling seas. Perhaps, too, it was also the first seed of my melancholy acceptance of life’s wounds – and of my sure knowledge that nothing is so dire that a good musical soundtrack can’t help.

I hope you get the mists and the boiling seas while you're gone, and I hope you have a lyrical soundtrack crashing around in the distance.