There’s a piano I know, a baby grand. The first piano. It sits in a beautiful house, in a beautiful room, on a rug chosen just for it. It’s a Yamaha, or maybe a Steinway. A modern classic, pristine and perfect, the best of its kind. Its glossy black edges throw sparkling highlights that walk with you across the room.
Everyone who sees the first piano remarks: what a beautiful piano.
There’s another piano I know, an old upright. It sits in the corner of a bar, on the corner of a street that’s nowhere in particular. It’s old, 30 or 40 years, more. Its warm brown timber is scratched, the stool is worn down at the edge. The white keys are brown around the edges, and the black keys have marks in grey. The brass pedals are tarnished except for their top surfaces, where the players foot meets metal. These are buffed to the shine of a Cuban sunset.
No one really notices the second piano.
The man who owns the first piano is a very wealthy man. He lives by himself in the beautiful house, and the house gazes out over the sea, capturing each silent sunset in its wide-eyed west windows. It is far away down the end of a long road guarded by two tall gates. The house has everything that can be put into a house, nothing is lacking. It has won many awards. It is beautiful, a jewel in the landscape.
The man bought it from a salesman in a fine suit. The salesman listens more than he speaks, and he always says the right thing, the best thing. Each word is an advancement of his cause, moving ahead with no digressions. He described the house as the ultimate coastal retreat, a private oasis for your heirs. A forever home. A legacy.
The man who owns the house is proud. He invites people who he thinks might enrich his life to come there, and look at the house which has everything. He invites a banker and his wife, and they come, because they have heard the house is very beautiful. Everyone says so. They enter through the tall gates, at a time of the first mans choosing. They walk past the first piano, and they remark; what a beautiful piano.
The man who owns the second piano is not a wealthy man. Neither is he poor, his life is in the wide space between. He owns the small corner bar, and before that, another small corner bar. He finds interesting people to work there, not bartenders as such, just people who like to create things.
One is a poet, and the poet rises early, when the light is just leaking into the day, in the hour when the deep quiet language of the world can be heard. Each evening the poet opens the doors of the bar, and a few people come. They come at a time of their choosing. They sit, and they talk, and the wine does its work, and the talk becomes laughter, and the laughter infuses the air, and soaks deep into the wood of the second piano.
The first piano sits in silence. The first man has never played the first piano. If he were to play the first piano, he would only play it perfectly. He would hire the very best instructor, he would listen intently, he would practice diligently, make a project of it. He would record the project and monetise it. He would succeed. He always does.
Each year, the first man hires a piano tuner to tune the first piano. After the tuner stows his forks, he runs his fingers over the keys and he thinks; what a beautiful piano. And he sits, and he plays a snatch of Mozart, a burst of Bach, and the music leaves the piano and it slips out the large windows just ajar and into the empty coast air and is gone, gone, unheard.
The second piano sits in the warmth of the laughter, and the people who make it. When the time is right, at no particular hour, just when he feels it, the second man sits down at the second piano and he plays. The people listen as they talk, and they beam smiles to each other that say, I Love This Song. The man plays Elton, and the Stones, and Billy Joel. He plays the Beatles, and he plays Bowie. And the keys dance and the wine flows and they sing, they stand and they sing, because these are the songs they know and these are the people they love and this, this! This is the place, just here and just now. And the music leaves the piano and it fills the place and the people, it leaks out to the street and city, it enters memory, it touches everything, everyone. With magic.
When the second man is tired, and can play no more, he closes the lid on the second piano. He sits and he talks and he drinks, as the long hours become small, then larger again, in the warm candlelight of now.
And the first man sleeps. He plans for tomorrow, for that time always to come, when everything will be in place, when it will all be perfect.
And the banker lies sleepless, and he thinks. He thinks that the first man is very rich, and the second man is not.
But the piano tuner dreams, and he knows that the second man is very rich, and the first man is not.
And the salesman drinks, and he remarks that the big house contains a lot, and the small bar contains very little.
But the poet rises before the light, and he knows that the big house is empty, while the small bar is full to overflowing.
Some would say that the first piano is worth a lot, and the second piano is worth nothing.
I would say that the first piano is just a piano.
But the second piano.
The second piano holds the world.
Two Pianos was written in just a few hours, on a rainy Saturday at a friends house in Omaha Beach. It was edited in less than 30 minutes the following day.
The reason it took so little time is that the idea emerged fully formed on a plane somewhere over the Pacific, while staring out at clouds and sea. It’s rare for an idea to be born complete, and to just need to be written or recorded. But it does happen, and this was / is one of those times.
Damon Stapleton writes about inspiration, here.