“We had everything we needed. We had piano, guitar, ukuleles, every type of everything. That was what was great about the way we grew up. It really makes a difference to have a piano in the home. I feel like everybody, even if you don’t play the piano, you should have a piano. Every time I go into a house and it doesn’t have a piano, I’m like, what are you doing?”
—Billie Eilish

Before my first son was born, I went out and bought a piano for the house. It was really important to me that he grow up with a piece of furniture he could walk over to and play his feelings on.

Here’s that piano, an old Lowrey I got in San Marcos for about the price of a flat screen TV:

Here’s a video of me playing it with Owen on my lap when he was 5 months old:

When he was about 6 months old, we found out that if I held down the sustain pedal and he played the black keys, it sounded like a Brian Eno ambient piece:

https://soundcloud.com/owen-kleon/op-1-no-2-by-owen

Here’s a photo of him as a toddler, looking inside the piano:

Here’s a video of me trying to show him how you can pluck the strings of a piano like a guitar:

Showing piano guts to my son with a little help from Brian Wilson pic.twitter.com/WDF9z6qgfP

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) March 9, 2016

We had that piano for the first six years of his life, and then we moved cross-country, and I gave it away. I regretted it immediately, and we spent two years without a real piano in the house.

But now, things are as they should be:

The most important piece of furniture in the house…