Also useful when decorating a necktie

There's something about piano solos that help me look at my life introspectively. Usually everyday I'm skipping around, talking 90 miles a minute, voicing literally any thought that enters my head and repeating lines from last week's Saturday Night Live skits at a volume that makes people in the library shoot me death glares. I ponder my problems at a fast pace; my brain tries to consider every single solution at once and I start writing scripts of conversations in my head that I want to have later that day before I even talk to anyone. Being indecisive, unfortunately, is like second nature and I wear down the buttons on my TV remote and the dial on my radio by changing channel as soon as my moth-like attention span is lost.

I took piano lessons as a child, but like most failed prodigies, practicing just wasn't as important to me as building mud pies or recording my own 7 year-old talk shows on my Little Tykes cassette player. Sure, there were times throughout my teenage life where I'd spend hours pinching and crushing the neck of a guitar relentlessly or get lightheaded from breathing into a harmonica for a few hours, trying to imitate the latest musician that had struck my fancy, but my deepest envy was always for someone who could sit down on a bench and without even seeming to try, press down a few black and white rectangles and create a masterpiece.

All this is to say that, oddly enough, my whole brain seems to slow down as soon as a IV chord on piano enters my eardrum. Maybe it's the rhythm that calms me down or the steady sound of the hammers hitting the strings, but my focus suddenly becomes far more clear than it normally is when I'm talking like I have to get every word out or I might explode. Granted, a baby grand isn't normally thought of as a hip, new sound, but it's the timeless quality that contributes so much to my peace of mind. There's something soothing in feeling like every song on piano is one I've heard some part of before; that really, there's only 88 keys to choose from, and all of them keep ringing in my brain long after they've been played.

There are a lot of reasons why this song makes me close my eyes and block out everything else but the music being made in front of me, but I don't want to bore you with to many words. In short, it has to do with all the feelings buzzing around in my head that won't go away, the cold weather that makes me much too nostalgic, that part where the rhythm is syncopated, a certain November day and the pure amount of love I hold for this man and his music. Not to mention, this is the orchestra version and I think I got a little misty when it got past the three-minute mark. If you really want to know, just tell me. I'll sit down and tell you all the reasons why I can't get over listening to it, with expressive eyebrow raises and accenting hand movements, too. Promise.
Take it away, Mr. Folds: