Like 78 notes on a piano

I’ve been piddling on the piano again.

A few weeks ago, Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” inspired me to open up the door to the keys and fiddle around for the chords for this incredibly catchy song.

It’s a song in a minor key. These are usually the morose, moody, spooky keys. The notes that, when played in a song in a major key, tell us something might be off.

But if the whole song is written in a minor key, the flats and sharps sound right at home.

My piano lessons ended when I was in elementary school, but then I spent many years learning the xylophone. So, I know some scales, but I feel like a total neophyte when trying to unpack a song like this one. (I wrote about Chappell Roan and queer visibility on my other newsletter, The Invisible Thread.)

It’s written on the bass clef, which is much harder to read for casual musicians like me. But I found some YouTube videos (and extra patience) and started figuring it out.

Playing this song opened my mind to the power of all the notes on the keyboard.

Not just the familiar ones.

I thought: These keys are just like the cards.

Tarot cards represent a whole spectrum of emotions, octave upon octave of related notes that can form innumerable harmonies, melodies, and melancholic moments. Some of them clash when played together. Others sing songs so sweet they resonate in the cells of our body.

This piano metaphor was on my mind last weekend when I read for a group of 10 young women who were in Austin for a bachelorette party.

They’d known each other since college, some before, so they knew each other’s stories, but as usual, the cards allowed them to share parts of themselves that they hadn’t shared before.

They were able to play notes that don’t usually make the score.

What a gift to sit with these women and hear the songs they made with the notes they were given.

I’m grateful to have a little time to send out a Don’t Fear the Death Card newsletter today. It has been a busy year of carrying burdens I’d been unaccustomed to carrying, but now that I’m figuring out that juggle, I’m hoping to have a little more space to write about my tarot work here.

Notes from the Wild Edge is a publication about grief, and what better time to revisit it than this time of the year when the veil between the worlds is so thin.

Sending much love to you all ahead of this full moon in Aries. What a beautiful season of change.

If you want to do a little tarot work, shoot me a note or check out my calendar at calendly.com/addiebroyles. It’s the season for birthday and bachelorette parties, so let me know if you’ve got a group of friends you want to get together for a class.

What songs might we make together?

With love,

Addie

Read past newsletters:

Absence is not emptiness.
The Ace of Cups and starting on the right foot
Feeling the pain of separation with the 3 of Swords