Heavy J

I'm listening to the Grammy Awards and they are inspiring me to play the piano more in the hopes that someday Adele or Chris Martin ask me to tour with them. I wouldn't mind if Someone Like You (me) was able to Viva La Vida and Make You Feel My Love while Rolling in the Deep in Paradise at the Speed of Sound. (Okay, I'm done.) Wait...and I'd like to be 21 again. (Okay, now I'm done.)

I LOVE music and have fairly eclectic tastes, much to the consternation of my family, mostly because I embarrassingly love to listen to pop and clean hip hop (what little there is) but I pretty much can't stand country music, my husband's lifeblood. My favorite playlists probably wouldn't be considered age-appropriate, nor would my behavior at the various concerts and music award shows I took my kids to when they were age-appropriate. (I make no apologies for my conduct at either life-changing Ricky Martin concert I attended that were truly the only "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" experiences I have ever had.) But music has a way of moving me emotionally and physically in a way nothing else can. And that includes food.

I have mentioned that I grew up with food as our measure of wealth, but another thing we always had in our home was a piano. We couldn't afford sports or dance lessons, but my parents made whatever sacrifices they had to in order for all of the girls in the family to have piano lessons. We were allowed to start lessons when we were eight, but when we moved from California to Utah when I was ten, that was the end of the piano lessons because there simply wasn't enough money. Despite that, we still had the piano and we had lots and lots of sheet music.

While building our home in North Ogden, we lived in a couple of transitional houses in Layton. One was a trailer (a mobile home when you're living in it, a trailer when you move) and the other a really, really old house in a decaying neighborhood behind a car dealership. Few, if any, kids were our ages in these neighborhoods so that left us a lot of time on our own to entertain ourselves. My choices of activities were to decorate my room with Donny Osmond and David Cassidy pictures (my sister, who shared my room, decorated with the Jackson 5), and play the piano. Having listened to my sisters practice for years, I found every song I could possibly play and just practiced and practiced and practiced. And practiced some more. In my ten-year-old fantasies, I would imagine myself serving lemonade to my husband Donny while impressing him with my piano skills. So I kept practicing even more in case he needed me to ever accompany him on the piano. (I have since had a real-life dream-crushing run-in with Donny so I don't care if he ever hears me play, and he can make his own lemonade.)

As I went through junior high and high school, I had the most accommodating choir teachers who allowed me to accompany the choirs (I was good enough to play for Donny, after all) and playing the piano through the years has been a lifesaver and has provided me with opportunities I could have never imagined (I'm still imagining the Grammys...). It got me a scholarship in college (although I later became a major disappointment to the choir director at WSC) and I will forever be grateful to my parents for providing us with piano lessons because it has given me an identity outside the weight issues. The piano is an awesome psychiatrist/psychologist that you don't have to pay. I can play happy songs, sad songs, angry songs, emo songs, dancing songs, silly songs...there is a song for every emotion. It also, however, has contributed to my sendentary lifestyle.

There are people who play the piano very physically and dramatically to the point that they are probably burning some calories, but I'm not one of them. Sister Jones (my piano teacher who was at LEAST 100 years old) would grab my shoulders and hold them still if I ever started to sway with the music like I watched them do on TV. She told me I would likely never play solos in Carnegie Hall but that I "sure as heck" would be playing hymns at church and as an accompanist I was not to draw attention to myself. She was absolutely right in that I have never even been to Carnegie Hall but I play the piano or organ in church pretty much every week. I'm not a great soloist, but I think I'm a pretty good mid-level accompanist and if your accompanist dies on the way to your gig, I'm the one you want to call, as long as you have the sheet music because I can sight-read but I can't make anything up. And thanks to Sister Jones, I hold perfectly still while playing so as not to attract attention away from your performance.

So while the piano does not contribute to my exercise, I have been reminded by my nutritionist (another post entirely...) that it is difficult, if not impossible, to snack while playing the piano. It really isn't advisable to eat Cheetos while practicing because the keys and sheet music end up orange (the same reason it is a highly unprofessional snack to eat at work when you are an administrative assistant/secretary). She suggested that whenever I have the urge to snack on something I know I'm going to wear on my hips later, I am to use the piano as an alternative activity. So that's my challenge for the week - substitute a potentially bad choice with a constructive activity like playing an instrument.

I did try to diversify my music skills earlier in my life by teaching myself to play the flute in high school, a very short-lived career due to the self-teaching part. Most recently I took some guitar lessons because it's really hard to sing around the campfire with a piano, but with my giant stomach and tyrannosaurus arms, I recognized that I was going to have to lose some weight in order to properly work the strings on the guitar. Another goal.

So if you hear me playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" (a song I have never been able to play) to perfection if you go by my house this week, stay away because it means I've been practicing way too much and I've been without Cheetos and chocolate far too long to be congenial.

Oh, and if I ever get the chance to go to the Grammys, you can just call me by my hip hop name - Heavy J.

You know I'll keep you posted.