I placed my wrists at my laptop, positioning them just so, readying my fingers to form a sentence.
And by placing them, I mean I lifted my forearms, settled the inside of my wrists against their customary resting place, and watched my knuckles round in a high, graceful arch, as though I were at the piano. Index fingers on "f" and "j," the remaining digits spanning the row, as though the keys beneath would play a scale or an arpeggio beginning on middle "C."
And I am five years old in Carol Hurst's piano studio, learning proper hand position as passed down from the masters. Wrists down. Knuckles high. Fingers round. Pads flat. Elegant as a ballet.
When scales become sentences, arpeggios morph into paragraphs, etudes--poetic blog posts, and concertos become other large-scale works that lie dormant on a CD-R someplace dark.
My hands at the keyboard, my daily practice.
The best of all instructors.
Wow, Cath! That's powerful! I too, learned piano from a young age. When I learned to type on the old fashioned manual typewriters, in the beginning I was the only one who could type with my pinky fingers. Even today, as I sit at the keyboard, I position myself as though at the piano - back straight, feet flat on the floor, wrists high, fingers rounded. I hadn't really thought about it though, until you posted this... :-)
Posted by: Michelle | December 16, 2011 at 02:31 AM