100 words on “88 Keys” from Reset to Factory Specs
Getting up sometime past midnight when time blurs the sleepless early hours together, I wandered to the piano and sat down. There are 88 keys on a piano and my Heintzman showed them all to me by the light of the piano lamp. I’d inherited both from my grandmother. She’d sat at these keys and played, like my mother learned and my uncle learned to play. Mahogany, ebony, ivory, copper, steel, brass, felt, reverberating and sculpting sound in the darkness. Fingers touching keys, hammers hitting strings, foot on pedal. Instinct and muscle memory came to me then and I played.