Carolyn

Love, By Ear

The year was 1968, and I was obsessed with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.” Hanging out with my cousins on the porch at my aunt and uncle’s farm one humid July afternoon, “Mrs. Robinson” came on the radio. My cousin Carolyn- two years older than me, skinny, cat’s eye glasses- was visiting from Florida. “I love this song!” I shrieked, literally unable to suppress my delight. Carolyn, eyes blinking, listened, then, left the porch for the spinet piano in the study and played the song. Not only were the notes exact, the phrasing was, too, the pauses, the swells.

“How did you teach yourself how to play that?” I asked. I figured sheet music, memorization, and months of practice were involved.

“I listened just now,” Carolyn said.

“But how did you know which notes to play?”

“It’s called playing by ear,” she said. Not a boast, just a statement of fact.

To twelve-year-old me, Carolyn’s plucking of Paul Simon’s song, which had been Velcroed into my brain, from radio airwaves to delicate fingers dancing across my aunt’s piano and out again into the universe- that wasn’t skill. That was sorcery.

Carolyn eventually got her doctorate in piano, as well as a Fulbright to study in Vienna, which is where she lived with Michael, her husband, fellow music phenom, and best friend, and taught voice, piano, and chamber music for over 30 years. She accompanied renowned opera singers and taught master classes.

Today, less than a week after her death, I find my thoughts not on her many accomplishments, but on her being. Her expansive grin that occupied her entire face, the soft hitch in her speech, her habit of looking ever-so-slightly obliquely at whomever she was talking to. The whirlwind of blond curly hair, frequently tossed; her animated piano accompaniment at family gatherings, playing Christmas carols to show tunes to our own inventive but often egregious parody songs. This is the Carolyn I find myself missing today like crazy.

Carolyn, this goes out to the place your sweet soul has soared. Wherever you may be, I hope you are feeling the joy you brought us. Music moved through you as naturally as breath. I’m imagining you playing by ear the musica universalis, and all of us graced to know you, to love you; hearts broken, we are listening.