We visited Taylor Swift's home for a few days. This afternoon, I was in the living room. Taylor was in and out, taking care of little chores around the house, oddly reminiscent of Laura Petrie. My wife Becky was in the adjoining kitchen, preparing supper. Taylor's roommate wasn't in, though she'd left stacks of ungraded papers on the piano keyboard. I'm sure she intended to come back to grade them shortly. It was my impression that the papers were the homework assignments of her elementary school students – maybe 4th or 5th graders.
I carefully moved the papers aside from the center of the keyboard so I could get to middle C. Taylor stopped whatever she was doing by the Christmas tree and joined me at the piano. We talked as she cleared the papers on the upper register of the keyboard and I worked away from the center toward the bass end. I thought I'd heard that Taylor still had the piano she had played on when she was a child herself. As we chatted, she confirmed that, "Yes, this is it."
I've always imagined Taylor as doing her early work self-accompanied on an acoustic guitar, but apparently their home had a stand up piano too. Not a Steinway, but I nice piano and well maintained.
I remember the one song I composed on the piano from my own ill-fated childhood piano lessons. Mrs. Edelman came to our home and taught my 2 brothers and I piano for a few weeks. Mrs. Edelman came only a few times, before my Mother decided her spare money could be put to better use than mandatory piano lessons for 3 boys would rather be playing football in the front yard. Before Mrs. Edelman retired from teaching piano lessons in our living room, I learned "Mr. Froggy".
I still remember the landscape format music book spread open on the piano's score sheet stand and the single notes arranged across 2 wide pages of bar staff, lyrics aligned below the appropriate notes. Mr. Froggy was illustrated in black ink atop the first bar of the song on the top of left page. Mr. Froggy only required a single finger to play – no chords necessary. "Mr. Froggy never flops... That's because he always hops." As I remember those words now, the accompanying piano notes reverberate in my mind's ear. For some reason, I remember the melody as being perfectly played, though I'm sure in reality, I heard it misplayed more often than I ever heard it correctly fingered as I struggled to learn it.
At some point, long after Mrs. Edelman had moved on, I made improperly fingered chordings of the notes in Mr. Froggy to compose my only piano piece, an instrumental performed with 2 hands, each fingering 3 white keys at middle C. My right hand index finger rested on middle C and the next 2 fingers of my right hand stretch to sit on E and G. The index finger of my left hand rested on A just below C and my left hand fingers mirrored the position of my right hand, proceeding down the keyboard. I clumsily move those same chord shapes up in unison to a couple of positions before I return to middle C at the end of the song. I still play that song every time I get close to a keyboard. That's what I was up to as I cleared the papers aside on Taylor Swift's piano.
Taylor's stationary exercise bike was off to the left side of the room, facing the wall. As I fumbled with the fingerings on my solo composition, Taylor walked to the cycle and took a lap or two.
From my place standing over the piano keyboard, I turned and saw Taylor's slim figure from behind. I had a thought, "You know what would be really cool, Taylor..." I pulled my ever present phone from my pocket to hand it to her. "If you would take my picture, then I could show everyone how I played my song on Taylor Swift's piano." I grinned.
Taylor laughed as she dismounted her exercise bike and reached for my camera. I noticed the smell of Becky's dinner, almost ready. I awoke.