I’m going to tell you about a pianist you don’t know. His name is Donald—his relatives call him Dunn—and I’ve known him for a short time, maybe two years, since I had a new lover. I don’t consider him close yet, but I know that when we go to Île d’Orléans, he plays croquet with my children and that touches me every time.
I observe them in front of the river learning the rudiments of a sport that came from the French countryside of the Middle Ages, in the company of this discreet man that is Donald, an American who came to settle in Quebec. I feel them peaceful in his presence. They also surely fell in love with the look he has when he invites them to play a game, with his English tweed cap. As if to say: I know we don’t know each other, but I know my sport.
When he’s not playing croquet, Donald spends a lot of time in his office, which is a fifteen-second walk from his house. From afar, it looks like a shed, except it’s not a chainsaw nor a mower found there. In Dunn’s cabin, there are his favorite books and the new ones he hasn’t dipped into yet, a table for writing, working on, and a piano. His own tools, to take care of him. Continue to learn, even when retired.
It happened to me a few times to borrow this space for the time of a Zoom or a recording for work, because there was too much action in the chalet (read here: children who ask for snacks or learning their choreography to a Dua Lipa song). Tell you how privileged I felt when I was able to lay down there, knowing that I shouldn’t take it for granted.
Because it is not because you need it that Donald says “yes” to you. Summer or winter, there is always a risk that he will answer you: ” No. I have my piano practice. »
Is it this office in front of the river or the piano that is most sacred? I note, while writing this review, that I have never touched his keyboard. Having access to this space and thereby having access to a part of this discreet man was already immense.
But I hadn’t seen anything.
I realized this last weekend when my boyfriend said to me, “Hey, Donald is in town. He has his piano recital with other students. Are we going to see it? »
I cried so much. To see them take the stage one by one, five years, eight years, twelve years… Children and pre-teens of all ages, come to present the fruit of their efforts.
Then Donald.
Who, as a child, took piano lessons, but hated this kind of ordeal to death. At 63, not without palpitations, he took the Quebec-Montreal route to present the Sonata noh 7 by Ludwig van Beethoven (opus 10 and 3), second movement length and mesto.
Listening to him, I understood the big things that were going on in his little shed. And I said to myself that there was not much more beautiful than always wanting to learn.