What I Like and Love To Do: The Piano
I said something about missing a plethora of things now that I have work. So to reminisce and to remind myself that I am not a corporate slave, I'm making a list, over the next few days. One hobby, activity, and love at a time.
The Piano
I remember waking up late this afternoon and smiling into a bowl of arroz caldo thinking, I need silence, my mind needs a rest and the rest of my body would like its time alone from the noise in my gut. Before I knew it, I had gravitated to the foyer and sat down, putting my fingers on the keys, and finding my heart.
Playing the piano for me is spiritual. It is an outpouring. Catharsis. Healing. Creation. There is no death there, no real pain and if ever there was, it simply slides into the notes, eroded by an intense, unfathomable quiet. It is to me, touching what is timeless and inexplicable, divine and intangible.
A few things quiet my soul in quite the same way.
(Sipping tea alone. Rum raisin Haagen Daaz ice cream. The mountains.)
I started playing when I was six. I started composing a little after ten. I cannot honestly say that what I have played/created/heard on this instrument is any fault of mine. Sometimes I believe the keys speak for themselves and that I am merely a medium, dipping my fingers in a world with the piano as its keeper. And I'm a rather crude medium, at that.
My affair with the piano has been a long and arduous one. I began because I wanted to entertain, and I wanted to be better than my nephew. I continued for the first five or six years because I was forced; my mother recognized my talent and found that if she didn't at least try to cultivate it, she would be wasting something good. My piano teacher herself gave me tremendous discounts on my lessons to urge me to keep playing through high school.
Finally, when I was contemplating on taking piano for college or literature, with varsity on the side, it came to a choice between music and soccer. I chose soccer. I chose literature. But I never put the piano behind.
Everyone was frustrated because here was one with an in-born ability to play, and yet she had not the diligence nor the fortitude for a vocation. I did, however, have those virtues for my soccer career; it was a small tragedy.
But it gave me something that I value beyond the flurry and sound of the field. In the end, I kept playing after being told to quit simply because I loved it. 'Til now, it owns a part of me that craves for peace, that revels in the notion that we are gods because music created, seems to come from nothing at all.
Now, friends have offered to market my own CD, for the price of taking a career and following it to its end. Others want me to play for jazz lounges. Others just want me to play, period.
Most of the time, however, I play for myself.
When I sit by the keys, my bones rest. My soul sings. And time, inevitably, stops.
The Piano
I remember waking up late this afternoon and smiling into a bowl of arroz caldo thinking, I need silence, my mind needs a rest and the rest of my body would like its time alone from the noise in my gut. Before I knew it, I had gravitated to the foyer and sat down, putting my fingers on the keys, and finding my heart.
Playing the piano for me is spiritual. It is an outpouring. Catharsis. Healing. Creation. There is no death there, no real pain and if ever there was, it simply slides into the notes, eroded by an intense, unfathomable quiet. It is to me, touching what is timeless and inexplicable, divine and intangible.
A few things quiet my soul in quite the same way.
(Sipping tea alone. Rum raisin Haagen Daaz ice cream. The mountains.)
I started playing when I was six. I started composing a little after ten. I cannot honestly say that what I have played/created/heard on this instrument is any fault of mine. Sometimes I believe the keys speak for themselves and that I am merely a medium, dipping my fingers in a world with the piano as its keeper. And I'm a rather crude medium, at that.
My affair with the piano has been a long and arduous one. I began because I wanted to entertain, and I wanted to be better than my nephew. I continued for the first five or six years because I was forced; my mother recognized my talent and found that if she didn't at least try to cultivate it, she would be wasting something good. My piano teacher herself gave me tremendous discounts on my lessons to urge me to keep playing through high school.
Finally, when I was contemplating on taking piano for college or literature, with varsity on the side, it came to a choice between music and soccer. I chose soccer. I chose literature. But I never put the piano behind.
Everyone was frustrated because here was one with an in-born ability to play, and yet she had not the diligence nor the fortitude for a vocation. I did, however, have those virtues for my soccer career; it was a small tragedy.
But it gave me something that I value beyond the flurry and sound of the field. In the end, I kept playing after being told to quit simply because I loved it. 'Til now, it owns a part of me that craves for peace, that revels in the notion that we are gods because music created, seems to come from nothing at all.
Now, friends have offered to market my own CD, for the price of taking a career and following it to its end. Others want me to play for jazz lounges. Others just want me to play, period.
Most of the time, however, I play for myself.
When I sit by the keys, my bones rest. My soul sings. And time, inevitably, stops.