A love of music

I love music. As I've said on Facebook, I'd rather go completely numb for the rest of my life than go without music. I love to sing, especially when I'm in a place where I can sing loudly- it's easier to hit the higher notes then, and my voice is stronger. I have an old guitar that needs to be restrung and tuned, and I've always dreamed that the guitar would someday rest in my lap, the strap loose over my shoulder, the neck in my left hand, my right hand strumming out something sad and bittersweet and thick as honey. I imagine that I could turn my poetry into lyrics and I could mingle voice with guitar and create a one person band. 


But what I'm best at, what I can do that can make crowds silent, is play the piano.


I don't remember it, but my parents are always talking about how, when I was just barely starting to walk and  talk, I crawled up onto my grandmother's piano bench and started tinkering out some simple, messy notes that went nowhere and did nothing. I do remember, though, very clearly, the day I was sitting in my living room, in front of my own piano, and my mom asked if I wanted to take lessons. I was quick to say yes- I was seven and a half, and I already knew that I loved making melodies on any piano I was near. 


The first woman we went to doubted my talent because of my youth. She turned me around and closed my eyes and touched a key and said, "Which one was it?" And then I would face the piano, reach across it's smooth, ivory teeth, and I would press down on that note. And I knew which one it was because I'd played the note before and I remembered the sound it made. She was shocked by how easily music came to my ears, and immediately jumped into a high level training book. My parents whisked me away from this madwoman who asked too much of me.


My first real teacher was a strict German woman named Anita. She taught me scales and finger placement, and began teaching me how to read the notes on the page as though they were words, sentences, paragraphs, each musical piece it's own mystical story. I developed a close bond with her, as well as the grand pianos at the store she was at. But before long we were moving to a new town, a tiny city called Alameda. My second teacher's name was Cynthia. 


Cynthia... was good for me and bad for me. Through the five years I learned under her, I went to the Piano Guild Auditions four times. The Piano Guild was a national competition that occurred every year, and each time I went I succeeded in winning pins and medals. I had a way of filling my music with emotions, something some others were incapable of.


But one thing Cynthia failed to teach me was how to read the music. The year I'd spent with Anita and the progress I made went down the toilet- suddenly my eyes were always focused on my fingers, and I was struggling with the black dots and smudges on my music sheets. Because of this, piano became a burden for me. I was no longer interested in the instrument I had once loved dearly. I was bored, and longed to quit taking lessons.


And then, one day, I had an excuse. I was going to high school, a special high school that would require my constant attention. I wouldn't have time for piano, I said, so the only option was to stop taking lessons.


After that, the ancient piano that had been a part of my life since the day I was born began to collect dust. I was finally free from those thirty minutes a day in which I would play the same songs over and over again and try in vain to play the notes in front of me. I was relieved, and every time I glanced at it my eyes would mock the wood that shut off it's yellowing keys from the sunlight. 


However, my fingers were itching. Always fidgeting, tapping out some beat or rhythm that I didn't know. For a while I thought that I was destined to play the drums- I could keep time with anything. But even when my hands were drumming percussion, there was something missing. A strange emptiness that confused the hell out of me. Why? Why was I always being haunted by these lingering beats and melodies?


It was today that it finally clicked. I was sick from drinking coffee with an empty stomach, and in an exhausted haze I stumbled up to the piano and lifted the lid, staring down at the black and pale yellow. Before long I was  mumbling to myself, squinting at the black and white blobs on old, wrinkled paper. I wracked my brain, pulling out old, children's books and trying to remember where my fingers went and that thing Anita told me...


Great Big Dogs Fight Animals. Morbid, yes, but it forced me to remember which note each line stood for. Suddenly the confusing mass began to form into something possibly readable, dusty memories floating to the surface. I opened up my green book, my heaven, flipping to The Swan.


My mother sighed as I pressed down on the pedal and the music flowed from my fingers, clumsily at first with stops as I desperately tried to remember what came next. But I had it. There it was, that song that was angry and sad and peaceful and joyous, all at the same time, relief rushing through me like a gust of wind. My back automatically straightened, my wrists lifted, my fingers remembering to keep your fingernails off the keys, but don't flatten the joints. 


It was magic and harmony and fantasy and reality and everything was falling into place. I'd found my love again, in this old, out-of-tune piano, sending waves of precious music throughout the space around me. I'd rediscovered an instinctual and profound love of music.