Tuning the Piano

I can hear it outside of my door, one long and mournful note after another. The same note, time after time after time. Monotonous, and yet strangely comforting... almost like a daily routine. I hear it floating into my space, making me stop and close my eyes as it meanders to my ears.

Setting down my sewing, I walk outside and sit on the steps of my building and take a seat. All is quiet except for that one note. It sends shivers up and down my spine as I hear it over and over. The soft light twang, the same vibration of a hammer on string that I've heard many times before. Slowly, it starts to change.... shrill at first, and then just a little too low. Small changes that you may not think would affect the song, but matter all the same.

There is silence for a moment, a small shuffling and the sound of wood on wood. I'm ready to stand when I hear the first few notes of a song wandering across the hall where I sit. It's soft and slow, a jazz tune like what you might find if you were in the bar of a Nior film. I can hear the note in there, the sad one... it sounds so at home in the song, surrounded by other notes of it's kind.

It makes my happy in a way, to know the note is safe. It's been twisted and tuned so many times now, but in the end it always stays the same. That one note, so lonely and full of longing on it's own, is so much more when set in time with others. I wonder if, somehow, we're all notes. All different on our own then we are with others... maybe some of us are better that way.

Music is a beautiful thing.