One night this week, Katie was downstairs practicing piano. She's got a standard run of songs she does, and though I don't know the names of the songs, I recognize how they sound... there's the lively springy one, for example, and there's the Russian industrial sounding one... this is obviously not something I can put into words.
So as she breezed through the usual repertoire, from out of nowhere came a song I'd never heard before — well-constructed (enough to stand completely on its own), very solidly melodic, rich, yet simple. And she was giving it the full treatment. I was equally impressed with the song itself and the complete respect she was giving it.
"She's singing," Martha said. Sure enough. I couldn't hear the words, but I could hear her voice. She's done the chorus thing through school and I already knew she could hold her own vocally, but I've not heard her sing in quite awhile. And along with the singing, she kept playing that same tune on the piano — again, something I've never heard in this house before, something which just appeared out of nowhere. For the record, she got none of this musical talent from me.
Now, a little backstory. One Memorial Day weekend several years ago, we had just arrived home from somewhere (nothing important, I'm sure) when a car pulled up in front of the house. Some guy got out and started up a conversation with me. As it turned out, he grew up in this house, "years and years ago," and he gave me just enough detail about the interior that I knew he was telling the truth. He said when he was growing up, there was a piano in the living room... and he talked about how the sound echoed through the house, and how you could hear that piano from down the street in the summer when all the windows were open. I asked him if he wanted to come in and look around — but he turned down my offer, saying it wouldn't be the same. A few minutes later he was on his way.
Here we are, "years and years" later, and once again the sound of a piano echoes through this house.
As for the mystery song, it turns out it was Adele's "Someone Like You" — she with the six Grammys, she with one of the biggest albums in recent memory. I ended up buying it last night... it's surprisingly good, the girl has definitely got talent. Just when I thought music was dead.