The Piano and Me

When I sit down at a piano, I sit down in front of black and white keys. I sit down in front of three pedals and pages of sheet music. It all seems so plain, flat, meaningless. But the ability of that music, those pedals, and those keys to bring passion to life is breathtaking. When I sit down in front of a piano, I see fire. My fingers stroke the keys; I roll my wrists, stretch my neck – my little ritual before I begin to play. Then my back straightens and wrists come to a resting position on the notes. Seconds pass as I focus my thoughts into the black and white keys, the black and white sheet music, the black and white that surrounds and envelops me as I begin to play.

Something I find so exotic about the piano is how I can be unaware of the notes and music that I’m playing and still produce passion, even though my mind is elsewhere. Or, in some cases, the music I play amplifies my feelings until I drown the music in the emotions of my life. I have found that Russian composers have that style of writing. The style that makes you so full of fire and grandeur that by the end of each song, you feel like crying with the absence of it. The preludes and symphonies and concertos encompass my life as though trying to somehow tell the story of it through the music. My fingers start to fly and my forearms cramp with the strain of the dynamic use of octaves in a Rachmaninoff prelude… but my mind isn’t there. My mind is off in another world. My world. My life.

Oh how the conversation starts out ever so quietly. So tense, as if I know that before it ends, I will have grown up more and grown farther from childhood. So tense, as if I know that this is not one of mom’s good nights. The dialogue escalates into religious debate. The dialogue escalates into a screaming match about a shared feeling of unappreciated misery. The unfairness of it all surrounds me and then… it all ends abruptly. One confrontation ends. One car drops me off at my dad’s house.

Do you see? Do you see how much emotion one page of music can bring to the surface? Do you? Not yet, because the piece isn’t quite over. Wonderful chords and transitions bring this prelude to a major key and a new blanket of emotion smothers me.

Running through the woods, intoxicated on the flirtatious nights of the young, I giggle as a boy grabs my waist and tickles me until I gasp for breath. Running through the woods, I laugh with my best friend as we play fairies and princesses (at our age?!). One night a boy calls me and we discuss books. One night a boy calls me and tells me that he is in love with me. So many nights living in an eternal sunset, in a cotton nightgown, in a room painted like the sky at dawn.

Arpeggios and chorded octaves resound with such a poignant, quiet tone that a hush sweeps the room, leaving an echo of ‘shhh’. The Rachmaninoff moves its way into touching nostalgia. Its almost as if you can hear every voice, every breath of the past mingle delicately in the music. All of the people in my life, the places in my life, and the events in my life rise to the surface of an ocean of memories that lie within my brain. You can never quite grasp them and you know that they can evaporate so suddenly, receding to the back of your mind; delicate memories, like sea foam.

My breath comes hard after bike riding and running under sprinklers in some twisted futile attempt to stay dry and get drenched at the same time. My breath comes hard as a boy kisses me, leaving a salty taste in my mouth as he gently bites my neck, leaving a hickey for Father’s Day. Tears stream down my face as I stare at the stars and sing to the sky on a crisp winter night in the woods that felt as hot as summer. Tears stream down my face as I stare at the stars and remember the girl who watched me sing that night. Lovely summer picnic days tell of ‘sword’ fights and songs written about friendship. Lovely summer picnic days tell of a time when we were living that friendship. Days spent on a trampoline, having ten-year-old conversations about faith and why the clouds looked like they were on fire.

Ever so softly, the piece returns to the beginning. It starts slowly, accelerating with great deliberation and pensiveness so intense, that it seems almost anxious. My arms are burning now with the strain. But the strain I feel is one in the back of my throat; the feeling that grows and constricts your breathing right before you start to cry.

My hands are shaking and my lungs feel short of the precious air that can make a difference between the lead, and a chorus part. My hands are shaking as I tray to steel myself for the onslaught of harsh words that I know will meet my decision. I try to live with myself after I take a piece of sharp jewelry in the shape of a sword and cut a diamond in my arm with it. I cry myself to sleep thinking of how different I am from what people think of me. I cry myself to sleep believing I’ve betrayed their trust in me and have been undeserving of their awed praise.

A powerful reiteration of the joyful chorus I played earlier comes back; more prophetic, telling me of what’s to come. The song transposes into the original minor key as it graduates into an accelerating intensity through dynamics and speed. To me it seems to portray an inevitable future, one of which I do not know. I can only stay within the music and try to understand what it tells me. One line of music can be as powerful as one page. The notes are lingering in the air as the sound diminishes.

This is what music is to me. This is what I see when I sit down in front of a piano.