Donne Moi l'Encre!

I have found lately that as impatient a writer as I am, the rhythm of typing doesn't seem to pull the ideas out of me as easily as a simple pen and paper. A dip-pen is even better, and a little bottle of sepia ink. Sepia ink has a nice flow to it, and doesn't seem to clot so much as black ink.
Also, I have the best ideas for lyrics while brushing on mascara or washing dishes. It must have something to do with the meditative half-moment, when your hand is either attempting to steady itself so you don't poke yourself in the eye, or engaged, without much aid from your brain, in sloshing warm, soapy water over egg goo on a plate.
I was thinking, last night, of things, memories in my life that I wanted to write about, or insert in a story or novel to give it a level of verisimilitude, or relatability, at least, and I came across a dusty old bit that involved trips back to the north-east to visit rellies.
I remember the upright piano, in a cobwebby basement that smelled, mainly, of old couches. It stood between the pinball machine and a billiard-table, and the bare concrete walls were here and there decorated with games of pin the tail on the donkey, half-scraped and bubbled with water damage. I remember venturing down the creaky steps, turning the lights on at the top, because even now, I'm afraid of the dark, listening for the sounds of my two older brothers playing billiards, the crack of cues hitting balls into one another. Whether they were there or not, it didn't so much matter to me. I sat at the piano, and dusted the cover with my finger-tips, brushing away the dust acquired over weeks of disuse, feeling the sandy grains and silky webs clinging to my hands, before I lifted the cover, and started to play.
I didn't know a thing about music, and I don't well remember why I liked it so much, but producing sounds, so easily, was what drew me first to it. Then, when I found that they neither bent nor squealed, if the keys were gently used, I liked it better. My feet didn't reach the pedals, and my hand scarcely spanned half an octave. Still, it was not the music or sound itself that I enjoyed, it was producing it. Being the conjurer of a thousand discordant notes, and delighting when I found a combination that pleased the ear. For hours at a time, I would press the keys in, gently or harshly, though I could never make much volume with my weak fingers, and hum tunes, words that came to mind, mainly about horses, and Robin Hood, and, occasionally, tragic deaths of lovers like Hero and Leander, of swimming the Hellespont every night, and one night drowning, of the terrifying certainty that if he was not there, he must be dead.
I am sure, if confronted with recorded evidence of the sounds I made, I would now be horrified, embarrassed, or, at least, a little annoyed that my childhood wonder was made a spectacle of, so many years from when it was poignant. Maybe the only thing that would annoy me is that I haven't the courage to do the same now, to make up sad songs in a basement, because I have grown up, and I can't stand sounding bad to myself.