the same piece, and then transcribed by me.
One day Chiara started to hum a hit-parade
tune and suddenly, because it was a windy day
and no one was heading for the beach or even
staying outdoors, our friends gathered around
the piano in the living room as I improvised a
Brahms variation on a Mozart rendition of that
very same song. “How do you do this?” he
asked me one morning while he lay in heaven.
“Sometimes the only way to understand
an artist is to wear his shoes, to get inside him.
Then everything else flows naturally.”
We talked about books again. I had
seldom spoken to anyone about books except
my father.
Or we talked about music, about the
pre-Socratic philosophers, about college in
the U.S.
Or there was Vimini.
The first time she intruded on our
mornings was precisely when I’d been
playing a variation on Brahms’s last variations
on Handel.
Her voice broke up the intense
midmorning heat.
@Bell_Amour ✨