Two!

These days, when I stumble upon the number two I immediately think about my hive journey. It started on the last day of June, two years ago. While I usually do not celebrate these anniversaries in a pompous style, I do like to remember this date. Staring the hive adventure is not just an ordinary date in someone's life. At least not in mine.

What a coincidence, the weekend engagement concept started also two years ago, that is what I found out in the post of @galenkp. His community helped me at the beginning to understand the importance of engagement and that it is actually not that scary to meet new people in this digital world. Although I don't find time lately to participate actively in the weekend prompts, I know that there are some great initiatives and challenges, weekend by weekend. So why not take part in this one?

You might know from my username, that I have some connection with music. With one particular instrument, the queen of the instruments, the piano! Everyone would expect that I take the question in this challenge about writing about two songs...or two compositions. However, I have to disappoint you with this. I wanted to share with you what are the two body parts that are attractive to me. If I would attempt to break a little bit of the rules, would it be another disappointment? Not particularly to say what are the body parts that are attractive to me but those that are essential to me.

The combination of mind and heart, for anything we do in our lives, is fundamental. To think, speak, react, interact, work or play an instrument. The mind controls and the heart gives the needed passion to never give up. We couldn't do anything without them. Although, the two visible and very important parts of my body and other pianists' too are hands and ears.

If you sometimes check my videos (although lately, it is a rare occurrence that I record myself playing the piano and publish) you will see my hands. The fingers that are dancing there on the keys, taking out sound from them. From the piano. My wrists are also helping in that process, and the arms and shoulders too. Not to forget the back and my whole body that serves as support. But hands are in the foreground. If we would make a survey about what is the most important body part of a pianist, I am sure the result would be hands. That is obvious.

However, what is not that obvious is that in the process of playing the piano we have to use our ears. My teacher used to say to me: play with your ears. Sounds crazy, right? How would I play with my ears? It would be a silly statement from my piano teacher, but what she really thought with her advice is that we should listen to ourselves while we play. I am not sure if I have ever explained, but we shape the musical phrases and sounds with our hearing. Not just with the fingers. The hands just obey my mind, which is guided by my ears. Sounds complicated? Well, it is very similar to the process when we talk, but talking is already more of an automatized process. When you talk, you don't actively criticise yourself at the same time on how your voice should sound and how you should pronounce the words. On the other side, I do it while I play the piano.

I can prove how important are the ears in this process of playing the piano. More important than the eyes (they are needed too, but I trained myself not to rely just on my eyes). On my Sunday morning gigs, I started to do a silly game. I put my sunglasses close to the keys, and when I am bored I look at the reflection of the glasses while I play instead of my fingers. I see my fingers but in reverse. And guess what. I can play the songs without any problem, as I am guided by my ears and not by my eyes.

I remembered to take a photo this morning, but obviously, I couldn't make a photo at the same time while I am playing. We see here just the keys, but you can get the idea of what I see.

Not to forget my hands and highlight once again what and how they are doing while I make music, I recorded a composition this afternoon. The title of it is Agitato, a piece of quick pace, which requires my fingers to be awake and dance there pretty quickly. The composer is Friedrich Burgmüller, who was a German pianist and composer from the Romantic era.

Cover photo made in canva using a template.