Willow Campbell
Arpeggio
Me: Hello, are you there?
Bob: I see–
Me: Oh, I hear you.
Bob: You can hear me. All we have is a ‘W’ and an ‘R.’
Me: Yeah, there we go. Now I see you.
Bob: I can't see you.
Me: Yeah, one second... Oh, there.
When I was ten years old, my mom won a first-piano-lesson-free for me during the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Church of Kent’s annual fundraiser. The teacher who’d donated the lesson was a regular at UU. He was an older man in his 70s, who’d sit at a folding table in the corner of Fessenden Hall during the social hour after services and sell Acme coupons. As a kid, I never gave a second thought to the odd custom of selling coupons (my thoughts were given mostly to snagging brownies from the table of treats); but thinking back now, I wish I’d paid attention to what kind of charity it was benefitting. His name was Robert Erdman. He went by Bob.
Bob: I moved to Columbus when I was six, and my father left when I was seven. And I have a sister who's four years younger and she's still alive and we talk all the time.
Once a week, my mom would drive me to Bob’s house for a one-hour lesson. He would teach me the keys on the piano, and where the different chords were, and how to read music. Bob’s house felt quiet in a way like nowhere else I'd been before. He lived alone in a two-story home that was a fifteen-minute drive from our house. When I was older, I learned from my mom that Bob’s wife had walked out on him one day, taken their daughter, and never came back. His floors were carpeted in faded yellow shag that had been squashed down into well-walked pathways. Even Bob’s heavy footsteps made only the softest shuffle in the quiet space. He had an extensive collection of Peanuts comics, which my younger brother would read whenever he was dragged along to my lesson.
Bob: My mother passed away in the nineties, but she always played the piano by ear. She couldn't read a note, but she was very good at playing by ear. She'd hear a song on the radio or remember a song and sit
down and play it.
Mother would play songs that were popular in the 1890s, which was then called the Gay Nineties, not at all meaning what the word gay means today, and the jazz tunes and pop tunes from the twenties, some of
them novelty tunes. That's the kind of stuff she would play. I got more into the Dixieland.
Ten-year-old me secretly dreaded each week’s lesson. Bob seemed ancient, and his quirks were off-putting. His button-up shirts often had food stains dribbled down the front of them; he smelled funky; and anytime he sat down, he’d groan loudly. I felt anxious, like I should be embarrassed for him while also trying not to acknowledge whenever he did something embarrassing. Often, he would choke on the ginger biscuits my mom liked to bring him. I would sit very still on the piano bench while he coughed or gagged for air. I would pretend not to notice. I would wait patiently for him to tell me to begin playing. He kept a glass of water on a coaster by the music rack.
Bob: Starting at age seven or eight, I went every week to a piano teacher. She had me doing the classical, which was okay. But then there was a couple of popular tunes, I think one was “Kiss of Fire” that I had the
sheet music to, and she finally allowed me to play that. She was very trepidatious about that.
In 2000, I restarted lessons with the Cleveland Institute. And then at Kent, I took a Music Theory. But there was from [age] 22 to 62 when I didn't play at all. Sorry— didn't take any lessons.
Me: No lessons. Yeah.
Bob: Yeah, more like 17 to 62.
Me: What was it like going back to lessons? Did you find you learned a lot? Or you knew most of what was happening?
Bob: Well, I found I didn't know as much as I thought I did. I played the first song for the teacher at the Cleveland Institute. And it was very interesting. I thought I was doing pretty good on this Chopin Nocturne.
And he said, “That's very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the music you're looking at.”
“What do you mean it doesn't have…? I mean I played the right—”
“Yeah, there's a lot more to the music than the notes. Now look here, this has a phrase mark and there's a crescendo there and there's a staccato here and all those things.” And he said, “You really need to understand
this a lot better.” And I did, he was right.
Bob’s laugh made me laugh— he honked like a tuba with a wet towel stuffed down it. His stray white whiskers were patchy and endearing, and he always had a story to tell. Bob’s self-confidence guided me toward an appreciation for music. The best moment of each lesson was when he would play something. He could turn the simple three-chord song I was learning, like “Do, Re, Mi,” into a full-on ragtime with syncopation and hands flying up and down to crazy rhythms and grace notes and energy bouncing off each finger. Every time, I would stand there swaying to his music, barely taller than the lid of the piano, a huge smile stuck to my face. And after the lesson, I would imitate him for my brother. I’d wave my hands up and down, back and forth, and waggle my fingers as if I was playing an invisible piano as fast and crazy as Bob could.
Bob: I guess I'm known for… I’m known for my left hand. Because I'm playing along— BOOM, BOOM, you know, very loud with the left hand. And I've had other pianists say, “I wish I had your left hand.” I
guess that's my signature. Strong left hand.
Bob used to tell me to imagine a story when I was playing my music. He said it would help me understand the phrasing and dynamics of each piece. I was supposed to picture what the music would look like as if I were watching it happen. My family had a Shetland sheepdog named Iris. Bob used to say, Picture Iris in a big field. And this part here where the music picks up (he’d point to my sheet music), Iris is running fast, all happy through the grass. And this part here where the music says “lente et grave,” Iris is sort of sad now. She slows down... Maybe she’s lost.
Bob: When I was eighteen, there was this scruffy little bar called the South Heidelberg in Columbus. I went down there to sing, everybody's singing around the piano and drinking beer, and I got to know the piano
player there. And I would occasionally play a couple of tunes, so he knew I could play. And he said, “Okay, I'm not going to be here next week, could you play?” And I said, “Oh my, what's the arrangement? I don't
know all these things.” And he said, “Well, just follow it by ear, and you get two dollars an hour, and they'll feed you, and give you all the free beer you can drink.” I said, “Okay, that's a deal.”
You had to learn an awful lot about playing by ear in that situation. ‘Cause there's like a couple of hundred college kids all drinking beer and it wasn't organized at all. Somebody would start out singing a tune in
a key and you had no idea sometimes what the tune was. And even if you knew the tune, you had no idea what the key was until you hunted around and finally found the key.
One of my students now— he's learning to play Linus and Lucy. And there's a part in the middle where the right hand just goes into playing chords and the left hand doesn't do anything. And I said, “Okay, we're
going to go along and play what's in the chords, but you're going to make up your own melody to it.” That kind of creating on top of a song that's already created— that I enjoy a lot, and I love to hear it, and I love
to teach it.
✵
Iris, the young Shetland sheepdog, was playing in the clearing in the woods again. She sprinted about, pretending there were sheep to herd. She dug holes in the dirt for fun, her paws shooting up clumps of shallow-rooted grass into a high arc behind her. After a while, panting and fully spent, she dropped down in the dirt to rest.
Iris began to feel hungry. She got up to sniff around the ground, hoping to catch a whiff of something good enough to eat. Despite there having been no smell to warn her, her wet nose bumped the end of what appeared to be a very oddly shaped bone lying just at the northern edge of the glade. It was cylindrical and tapered. One end was as thick as her snout and half hollow. The other end curved up into a fine, thin point. It was a very odd bone, but as she was quite hungry and quite curious; she gave it a quick lick. There was the faintest flavor of something she thought she had tasted before. She licked the bone again. It was sweet. It tasted like the fudgy brownie she had once stolen off a tray when the family she lived with, in the house down the hill, had been singing to the youngest child. Nobody had noticed her slink under the table to wolf down the gooey prize. Iris gnawed on the ivory bone in delight and felt full at once.
She began to hear music coming from the woods to the north. Iris perked up her ears and tilted her head towards the direction of the noise. She felt the melody tickle the tips of her whiskers, causing her nose to twitch. It was a delicate and layered tune. A soft piano motif made its way to the forefront of her mind. Iris felt like the music was filling her ears, like it was encircling her, drawing her into the woods. She allowed it to lead her.
As soon as all four paws and the last fluff from the tip of her tail had passed over the dark threshold from clearing to wood, she began to feel a change. Her glossy merle coat started to shed in fat tufts, her vision clouded, she felt her body expand, her stomach thicken out, her breath became heavy, and she felt an aching tiredness in her bones. Iris eased down onto her haunches in confused exhaustion and laid down. She rested her now-grey chin on the top of her now-scruffy paws and closed her eyes. Iris dreamed of her family and of the wild dogs that must have lived in these woods so long ago. She wondered who the first dog had been and how she might have looked.
✵
As I grew up, Bob grew older too. I advanced from simple “Do, Re, Mi” to somber Satie and Chopin preludes and Brahms and Beethoven. I became Bob’s oldest student. He saw each angsty haircut I buzzed through, each boyish outfit. I drove myself to lessons now. He had a diabetic sweet tooth. A few times, I let myself into his house to find him sitting down to a bowl of ice cream at the kitchen table having forgotten it was time for my lesson.
Bob: My eyesight's kind of failing. I have to look real close at the music. And it gets blurry when I work too long. My eyes just wear out easy, and so that's very hard for me to do. And when I teach piano now, I
usually don't play the whole piece for them like I did when I was teaching you.… Do you remember Benny at the church?
Me: I'm not sure.
Bob: Okay, I think he was a little kid when you were there. At age two or three, I’d sit next to him in church, and he'd be pounding out the music. So, he had a good sense of rhythm, and he's my star student now.
And he can play all the stuff I've taught him better than I can. What I do is tell him how to play it rather than show him how to play it. And then he does the fancy stuff, all the arpeggios and the fast notes, and he
does them well.
But mainly, I play to teach now. And occasionally, once a month, if the COVID doesn't get us— which it has for the last few months— I play at The British American Club in Twinsburg. That’s kind of fun. And
that's with a seven or eight piece band doing the Dixieland. But that's not every month. I'd say it's six times a year, very spotty with the COVID. And I don't feel like I'm learning anything new; I've known the tunes
for decades. We have fun doing them, I enjoy it, and it doesn't sound terrible; but I'm not real good at it, as I was once.
Bob started taking unintended naps during my lessons. I would begin to play a piece, and he would drift off, snoring slightly while I worked my way down the page. I decided if he fell asleep while I was playing, I would play the piece all the way through to the end, and then repeat the last line over and over. That way, when he woke up, he would hear that I was at the end of the piece and assume he had made it just in time. Sometimes, I’d have to hit a few chords loudly. Piano lessons started to feel like a dance around his well-being. He lost weight and his face grew pudgier. I began to dread the weekly lessons the same way I had when I was ten, afraid I might be the one to find him incapacitated and alone.
Bob: Probably now is the most discouraged I've been; because I realize now, my fingers aren't in shape, and my eyesight isn't very good, and the fingers can't do what they used to do, and I can't see the keys, so it's
very hard to do things that I used to do. That's discouraging. If you want to do it, do it while you're young. Because it ain't easier when you get older.
✵
There was an old Shetland sheepdog who, one day, found herself alone in a clearing in the woods, not quite sure how she had gotten there. She slowly limped around, jowls to the ground, hoping to catch the scent of something she recognized. Near the east end of the clearing, her snout bumped into what appeared to be an ivory tusk. She picked up the strange bone in her mouth, and a cacophony of sonorous spices flooded her taste buds— cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, allspice. Surprised and confused, she dropped the tusk to the ground. She sniffed it, rolled it over with her paw, but it gave off no scent. The dog scooped the tusk back up into her mouth and bit down. A rich gingerbread flavor coated her tongue and filled her with warmth. She wagged her old tail in an arrhythmic thump and stretched down to enjoy the new treat.
✵
Bob: Music is a form of relaxation. It's a release. I consider it a form of meditation. When I'm playing with this band up at the British American Club, every so often we get into a real groove, and the whole bands
doing good, and I'm whooping the piano, and that feels good. It’s an accomplishment. And it's very present, very here and now. And that's what I like about it.
The end of high school marked the end of my piano lessons. I was turning eighteen, leaving home, and eager to spend the summer working in New York City. Bob had me write down his recommendations for music spots to visit in the Village. He was teary as we said goodbye.
Bob: If I want to think something through, I'll go to the piano and find an appropriate tune, particularly if I'm by myself.
But anymore, I'll go to the piano and I'll play a lousy version of it and remember how I used to play it. That's why I say, if you want to do it, do it while you’re young. It works better.
Five years after my last piano lesson, I was finishing my Bachelor’s in Filmmaking at Kent State University. A professor of mine started an initiative called “For the Ages”— a response to the societal neglect for older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The initiative sought to have young filmmakers use their craft to honor and give voice to the elders in their community. I thought of Bob. I wanted to speak to him, to ask him things I’d never thought to ask. I emailed him to see if we could meet over Zoom, and he said yes.
Bob: You're growing a beard, are you?
Me: Yeah... Surprise, I'm transgender.
Bob: Yeah. Once I saw the beard, I began to figure that out. Were you when I knew you in high school?
Me: I didn't know. I didn't know then. No, I figured it out through college.
Bob: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's fine.
Me: Yeah.
✵
In her bones, the old dog began to feel the pulse of a jaunty music resonating from the eastern woods. She stopped gnawing on the tusk to lift her head up and listen more closely. The music became louder, faster. Her whole body shuddered as the bright and bouncy syncopation of a piano tune vibrated through her. Overcome by the music, she sprung up, eager to find the source of the inspiring chords.
As soon as she had left the clearing, and the dark shade of the trees was cast around her, she began to feel lighter. Her legs could speed faster, her vision was clearer, her once-lame right paw felt just as strong as her left one now, she felt healthy, felt energetic, felt free. She raced through the trees, dodging branches, and leaping over spindly shrubs. There was a fresh wind in her newly glossy fur, and she began to remember something of who she had once been. She could hear the familiar voices of her family calling for her. Her name was Iris! She had a home and a warm place to sleep at night! Iris tried to slow down, to stop, so that she might turn around and run back towards the people who knew her, who might be missing her. But she was not able to turn around, not able to stop. Without her permission, her legs continued forward. She could only face the frenetic music. Iris became afraid. It didn’t matter if she closed her eyes, she was still forced to run. With her eyes tightly shut, her body propelled through the woods, exerting every ounce of newfound energy she had gained.
✵
Bob: So, I forget the terminology, but you present as a boy?
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
Bob: Yeah. Okay. That's fine. Hey, it's part of life.
Me: Yep.
Bob: There's a wonderful old tune, comes from a play that I think a Broadway— Off Broadway probably— show put together in the 50s, and it's called The Nervous Set, and I’d never heard of the play, but
there's a song in there called “All the Sad Young Men.” It's about gay and— nobody admitted to being ‘TG’ then— but it's about gay men, and I heard it played a lot when I was playing the piano in New York,
because a lot of the people involved in music were gay, you know.
Me: Right.
Bob: And you might look up that tune. It's a very nice tune, and an interesting one. I'm sure it's something you could play. It's Fake Book style. But you could figure it out.
Me: I'll look it up.
Bob: Yeah… Interesting.
Me: Yeah.
✵
Iris found herself alone in the woods. The music had stopped, and she was no longer forced to run. Panting, trying to catch her breath, she bent down to lap up muddy water from a small puddle that had collected in a divot between two tree roots. Iris had no idea which way was home, no sense of where she was or how far her legs had carried her. She sniffed the air. Could she follow the wind? She sniffed along the ground, trying to retrace her path.
Iris spotted the object before bumping into it this time— an ivory tusk laying boldly on the dead leaves of the forest floor. Could this strange treat somehow take her back to the clearing? Famished from her forced race through the trees, Iris’s mouth watered at the thought of the satisfying taste of chocolate and ginger from the previous two tusks. But she was hesitant. To taste this treat was bound to invoke the unknown.
✵
Bob: You hang out with the girls or with the boys?
Me: A mixture.
Bob: A mixture. Okay. That fits, just curious. I don't think I've ever really talked to anyone who's ‘TG.’
Me: Oh, yeah?
Bob: I mean I probably have but I didn't know it, you know what I mean?
Me: Yeah, maybe.
Bob: And there certainly are some in the church.
Me: Yeah. My sophomore year of college, when I was nineteen, I kind of started to realize, and that's when I started transitioning.
Bob: Okay. And you do a physical transition and a mental transition?
Me: Yeah. The mental stuff happens first, as you're realizing it. But yeah, then a physical transition.
Bob: So, if you were to marry, you'd marry a woman?
Me: Ah, I don't know…
Bob: You could marry anybody.
Me: Yeah. Anybody.
Bob: And that would be okay. All right, that's fine. Just a world I'm not so familiar with, so I thought I'd ask.
Me: Yeah.
Bob: But I suspected once I saw your beard.
Me: Yes, that probably gives it away.
✵
Iris licked the tusk. A milky sweet vanilla flavor blossomed on her tongue. It tasted like the ice cream she had once been allowed to lick clean from the bottom of a family member’s bowl. It was so silky and pleasant. She gnawed on the bony tissue of the tusk until she began to hear a new music emanating from somewhere to her right. The music echoed through the trees like an icy wind, biting through to the soft skin beneath her fur. It made her eyes water. Iris felt the music like a dirge deep in her chest. A soft and disembodied voice accompanied the tune. Iris stood still and closed her eyes against the cold. She caught only whispers of words about “sad young men” growing old, choking on youth, or hiding from the truth. The singing voice pleaded with a dim moon to guide “the sad young men” home again.
She shivered in the darkness of the woods and missed her family. She wished that she was with them. And she was.
✵
Three years ago, I started playing keyboard in a band with my partner and some friends. I think about Bob sometimes. I wonder what he’d think of the parts I’ve written to go along with our songs, and if his love of Dixieland jazz is what added that extra sparkle into my feel for playing the piano, for improvising, transitioning, hitting on something uncomfortable and trying to make it work.
Me: Hello, are you there?
Bob: I see.
Me: Oh, I hear you.
Bob: You can hear me. All we have is a ‘W’ and an ‘R.’
Me: Yeah, there we go. Now I see you.
Bob: I can't see you.
Me: Yeah, one second… Oh, there.
Fine.