One-Arm-One-Finger-Pull-Ups

I got such a fright - inserting my finger into Mm. Henroit last night. I must still be in shock; I’m light as a feather, but I can’t take flight, my one-arm-one-finger pull-ups don’t feel right this morning (is the tendon in my middle-finger too taut?). A psychosomatic, acrobatic… oh, I’d love to just get up out of bed and play the piano for half an hour instead. What a way to start the day - with something delicate and sensitive – Satie or Scarlatti, rather than this obsessive, animal pulling every morning.

My father plays, his mother played, but I never progressed beyond “A Dozen A Day (Book 1, Pre-Practice Exercises for the Piano).” 

I doubt whether I even mastered more than half a dozen tunes before I gave up. Yet one tune caught my imagination - changed my life to such an extent that I’ve been playing that same tune every day, every year, ever since.

It’s called “Hanging From The Bar By Right Hand” and I took the tune visually, and practiced and practiced and practiced, until I could play it physically. I simply swapped bars of music for pull-up bars, piano keys for the trapeze.

I spent more time on the weighing scales than I ever did on piano scales, until I reached the point where I could not only hang from a bar by one arm, but pull-up on one arm.

Over the years, I gradually refined it from a five-finger-exercise, to a one-finger exercise. In pianistic terms, total regression, on the pull-up stage, a virtuoso performance. That said, perhaps I’ve been playing the same tune for too long (the pianistic equivalent would be, constantly playing the same note, albeit, to perfection). Perhaps it’s about time I pulled my finger out.