Steph Penny

Music has always been home to me. When I am filled with joy and wonder, I express it through music. When life gets hard, as it so often does, I retreat into the waiting arms of songs and melodies and allow them to embrace and soothe me.

I have played keyboard since I was seventeen and have been a singer for as long as I can remember. Because singing is portable, I can effectively carry my singerly ‘home’ around with me. The keyboard is less portable but just as much my home. Both are a source of expression and reflection in my life and they ground me when nothing else can.

So it stands to reason that the last time I had a major childless-related wobble, I went home. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to write about it. I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried. There were no words for the pain that throbbed acutely in my heart as my world was submerged in sorrow. I did the only thing I could think to do.

I went to my keyboard.

The wonderful thing about the keyboard is you don’t need words. You don’t need to analyse what you’re feeling. You don’t have to know what to play and it doesn’t have to sound any good. You can just sit down and let the emotions flow through your fingertips. On this particular day, I felt immense comfort in not having to put words to my soul-rending grief. Music met me where I was at.

It was interesting to note what happened next: I began to sing a song to the daughter I had never met. I could vividly imagine her sitting at the keyboard with me, and my heart ached for the missed keyboard duets I could have had with her. So I sang for her. I injected the song with plenty of sadness, and I painted a picture of how beautiful my daughter would have been too. The finished song, Angel at my Keyboard, is an ode to her arising from my dire need to go home.

Composition was not the goal that day. It was a pure bonus of my hasty retreat to my safe haven. Music, my trusted confidante, has never judged and will never judge me. It never pressures me to do anything I don’t want to do or be someone I’m not. And, like a true home, it is always warm, always welcoming, always waiting.

Verse 1:

There’s an angel at my keyboard

Little girl, of no more than three

She has blue eyes, gently sparkling

And a smile that’s filled with glee

There’s an angel at my keyboard

She is playing along with me

Little fingers, brushing ivory

Softly dancing upon the keys

Chorus 1:

And as she plays

It seems to me

The sky is slowly spinning

And as she plays

It seems to me

The universe is dancing

Verse 2:

There’s an angel at my keyboard

Can this player be my daughter?

She’s rehearsing, yeah she’s learning

She’s remembering all I’ve taught her

There’s an angel at my keyboard

We are playing side by side

We are duelling and dueting

We are singing, harmonising, yeah

Chorus 2:

And it seems to me

The galaxy

Is infinite in beauty

And it seems to me

The galaxy

Is spiralling into

The distant beyond blue

Chorus 3:

And it seems to me

Eternity

Is right here in this room

Right before me now

And the dancing lights

Swirling and entwining

In a Milky Way of colour

That surrounds her…

Verse 3:

Little Angel at my keyboard

How I dreamed of who you’d be

I would teach you, and inspire you

As you mastered your artistry

Little Angel at my keyboard

You were supposed to be here

You were supposed to be here…