Five Easy Pieces

I went searching today for a song I didn't know the notes to. A strange thing, I just have this feeling and I don't have the song for it. I've been playing lately, and I can emote, but it all feels like Five Easy Pieces, this great 1970 movie about a former piano prodigy turned prodigal son played by Jack Nicholson. One scene I especially appreciate:

He returns home for the death of his father and he wants to screw his brother's wife so he plays her Chopin's Prelude in E minor. He finishes, she's near tears, launches into what pure emotion he poured into the song. And he looks at her and wryly explains he's been able to play it since he was something like eight, it's one of the easiest songs around, and he felt nothing. Naturally that just makes her want to save him even more.

So, I had to find something new. My old piano instructor, Gloria, ordered all my books for me before I quit, most of which I wasn't ready for, and she knew this, I mean, she knew I wasn't ready for them then but I would be someday. Its funny, she's taken on this new found prodigy from NE Portland Willamette Weekly has been covering. She recently compared him to a floodplain in a follow up article. Kind of made me wonder what I was? A rice-paddy? Was there any vegetation at all? Was I just lost in the sea?

Anyway, I think I may have found it in an untouched Scarlatti volume. Gloria's foresight still amazes me. Each time I finally find I'm ready for one of the composers she picked I feel I've just opened a letter from a long departed friend. Pretty amazing that she knew me that well, knew the person I'd become.