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April 11, 2006
my piano has come home
when i finished college, i scraped up money to buy a computer. instead, in a fit of impracticality, i bought a piano. it was a lovely studio upright that had a gorgeous baby-grand-ish resonance. it went nicely in the corner of the huge living room of the house that i was sharing with three other girls. i loved it.
music was a part of my life since before i was born, and playing the piano rather defined my growing-up years. being on my own for the first time, i wanted to keep this part of myself, even if it meant eating ramen a little longer to afford it.
a few years later, i moved. my new apartment was on the second floor, with a very bizarre entryway that all but prevented the piano from physically fitting through the door. on top of that, the new landlady was adamant that i not have it. i suppose i could have snuck it in by removing the entire front window somehow, but that would have been less than stealthy, to say the least. i also suppose i could have had someone take it apart and reassemble it inside the living room, but that would've been expensive and risky. so the piano went to live with a nice family who couldn't afford a real piano and whose three daughters had previously been practicing on a crappy electric keyboard using a kitchen sponge on the floor as a mock sustain pedal. i was happy it had a good, deserving home.
a few more years went by. i was still living in the same apartment, and now dating T.T. the piano-sitting family was moving, and besides, they could now afford a piano, they said. happily, T.T.'s roommate was a music major and welcomed having a piano in the house. so i sort of got my piano back -- i would just drive over whenever i wanted to play. all was well, until T.T. moved almost 40 miles south to his own apartment. it didn't make sense to move the piano too, so his former roommate cared for it until we got married. two months ago, after being out of my possession for over 5 years, the piano was delivered back to me.
it was almost intimidating, having it in the open living room, the only real piece of furniture there. i would approach it cautiously, as if it might sneer at me or rebuff me for sending it into exile for all those years. no, that's not true, i'd tell myself, it wasn't the piano in exile; it was being played regularly by eager music students, people who really appreciated it. the exile was mine -- for almost the first two decades of my existence, music and piano had filled so much of my life. it had stopped, suddenly, with my move. i'd let music drain slowly out of my fingers, my brain, my heart. i would push the loss away whenever i'd think of it. it was embarrassing, somehow.
but now i had the piano back. i began to play it a little at a time, and only when no one was home. i could tell immediately that the drain had taken its toll. things that were easy were now ridiculously difficult. it was a stretch for me to let go completely into improvisation, without written music. my hands, which used to be able to span over an octave without straining, quickly tired after basic scales.
the piano was out of tune from being moved, and i could only go about 15-20 minutes before the jangling tonality got on my nerves. it was a good excuse to stop playing; i didn't have to face the hard work it was going to take me to reclaim what was once mine. of course i procrastinated finding a tuner.
well, i got over myself this week. i was stacking some mail on the covered keyboard and realised i was treating my piano like a common endtable. it really pissed me off. i decided i was tired of my stupid excuses for not playing, and started calling music schools to get recommendations for a tuner.
the tuner comes tomorrow. when he's finished, hopefully the piano will sound as it did when i first fell in love with it in the showroom. and hopefully i will find a spark of the excitement i once had to make music out of thin air, or to weave black marks on a page into a complex melody. will i go so far as to take lessons? perhaps. i could use some help rehabilitating my creaky skills, and besides, there are styles i'd love to learn, like jazz or honkytonk, that i'd need a teacher for. but first, let's just see if i have the courage to open the cover and start running my fingers over the keys.
i hope i do.
Posted by hadashi at April 11, 2006 11:26 PM
Comments
I hope you do too. The fact that I never got a chance to learn to play the piano is one of my life's disappointments. The kids downstairs from me are learning to play and while their practice sessions sometimes gets on my nerves my heart is secretly cheering them on. I'm sure it is compulsory now but I hope they appreciate the gift someday.
Posted by: Joanna at April 14, 2006 12:13 AM
I still remember worship singalong with you and your parents. I LOVE HEARING YOU PLAY!! I am rooting for you and your piano.
Posted by: Marti 
at April 16, 2006 6:33 PM
Joy. That is all I can think of to say. Hearing that you are playing again brings me such joy because I know how much you once loved it. Your passion for music is like a faithful friend who waits for you (with open arms) to come home and stay a little while.
Posted by: Rachel at April 16, 2006 8:02 PM
Urgh. I wish I had seen this sooner! I have a GREAT tuner, although he's in the OC. And I also have a child hood piano, which is odd, because it's more of an albatross around my neck, and I want to sell it, but can't seem to... and no one else in the family wants it... and no one plays it here (I was never very good anyway)... and so on. Glad your story is better than mine.
Posted by: DJWanda at April 16, 2006 11:35 PM
Yay for musical instruments! One of my dreams is to one day live somewhere I can start practicing the cello again. Playing music is soothing for the soul...
Posted by: the swede at April 18, 2006 3:09 AM
This is a wonderful story. I love the way life sometimes doesn't press itself on us--how it lets us wait until we're ready, leaving doors open that it knows we'll want to enter someday. Or re-enter. I hope my story will end this way too. The family I sold the piano to is likely going to move overseas from this area at the same time we will be moving cities, and plans to call us to see if we want to buy it back at that point. In the meantime...maybe a "crappy electric keyboard" will have to do...
Posted by: Kristin at November 13, 2006 12:00 PM
thanks for all the encouragement. i'm still intimidated, by the way, but less so as time goes by...
Posted by: hadashi at November 15, 2006 11:58 PM
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