I played the piano today.
I played it without headphones and while someone else (my partner, J) was in the room. I didn’t even really think about the fact that he was there, I just played- a few old Clementi sonatinas that probably were trotted out nervously in front of an audience in 2002, some Beethoven variations from my senior recital (yes, I had one of those), and a little Tschaikovsky that I didn’t really feel like getting into today.
This is a really big fucking deal.
I don’t remember exactly when or why I stopped playing the piano, only that it happened slowly over the last 12 years. First my beloved piano teacher moved to another state to be replaced by a Very Serious Russian woman who fulfilled all of the stereotypes about music teachers who grew up in the Soviet Union: permed/ feathered late-80s hair? ✔. large bejeweled glasses? ✔ loud polyester blouses? ✔ extremely high expectations communicated mostly through criticism and shame? ✔.
The first time performed after starting lessons with her was at a piano competition she was hosting about a month into our teacher-student relationship. I wore my dress shoes, 3 inch heels, which I promptly took off in order to play, since using the sustain pedal in heels is basically impossible. This had been the norm in recitals with my previous piano teacher at the same music school, so I figured it was still ok to relieve myself of my impractical footwear while I plated. I was VERY wrong. I think my teacher saved her actual admonishment for after the competition, but I distinctly remember being told that I had committed an egregious faux pas, and had embarrassed her to the other judges through my casual disdain for Formal Competition Etiquette, on which I was never briefed.
Studying piano had always been something I had done pretty intensely, as with all things I did– I would obviously keep working until I was the best, because that’s what I did. By high school it was clear that I was not ever going to be the best at anything related to math or athletics, but I inherited a musical intuition from my dad that kept me up pretty high in the piano rankings, at least in the small pool at my music school. My new teacher decided that all that was standing between my success and failure as a concert pianist was my lack of dedication. And so we trained. And trained. And trained. She rebuilt my understanding of the instrument from the ground up. Even my hand position, crafted through a decade of exercises in elementary and middle school, changed after a few months of lessons with my new teacher. My piano technique was the best it had ever been, but I don’t think I liked it as much. What had once been hard work driven by enjoyment of the pieces was suddenly a minefield of possible criticisms. Every mistake meant starting over from the beginning in my lessons, and practicing became even more anxiety-inducing. I have never really enjoyed practicing when there are other people around because I have a perfectionist streak and didn’t like anyone to hear my mistakes. I’m pretty sure that even at 10 I was imploring my mother to leave the living room so I could pretend she wasn’t there while I was practicing (I will be the first to admit that this was probably annoying and unreasonable for everyone else in my family, and in retrospect, I am glad they usually just moved a couple feet away rather than fleeing the only common space in our house). Needles to say, having an external enforcer of my own unrelenting criticism did not help relieve these tendencies. I sent some recordings of myself playing the piano along with my college applications and thinking about that process still makes my blood run cold. I would play one of the two pieces while my dad stood behind me with a mike and a recorder and we would try to get it in one take but the adrenaline mixed with my new piano teacher’s “tough love” made it very hard to get through each piece “stop. too many mistakes. have you been practicing? you must start over now”. I think it took a month, maybe more, to get the final version of both pieces.
I continued to play the piano in college, but had a very hard time practicing and performing. I often became so nervous in master classes that I would start shaking uncontrollably (hot tip: this phenomenon makes it hard to do anything that involves moving your fingers very precisely). I cried in numerous lessons and only made it to the piano student recital maybe twice in three years (there was one per trimester). Some of this was definitely due to negligence on my part, but even the times that I was successful in practicing and learning a piece involved a lot of crying and panic. My professor acted as equal parts teacher and therapist as I sat next to her, not producing the sound I wanted, and trying to explain that something had changed— I couldn’t do things like I used to. I’m sure it just sounded like excuses to her: another student who needed to work on time management, begging for an easy A.
Now that I have the benefit of hindsight, and half a masters degree in human development and behavior, I can appreciate that all of this stress, confusion, and grief surrounding my musical abilities was basically my brain trying to tell me I wasn’t ok. I have, and probably always have had anxiety, but I didn’t really know that, even then. I was pretty good at hiding it until it became so big that it took over every aspect of my life, including this one. After I got a handle on my anxiety I was still filled with grief at having lost what felt like my identity. For years my go-to icebreaker facts were “I play the piano and my name is German”. I’m sure there’s a part of adulthood where all people realize that their hobbies will never be their career, but it doesn’t mean they stop doing them. While I was learning how to be an adult and manage my brain, I dropped everything. My intro shifted to “I like a lot of things in theory but mostly I watch TV instead of doing them. I’m tired and broke because I’m in school and working. I’m angry about everything all the time. I don’t have free time, but when I do I work at a summer camp.” I don’t want that to be me anymore.
I’ve been working on getting back into things I used to do, trying them on again to see if I can mold them back into my sense of self, or at least re-shape the places they used to reside. I’ve gone running a few times recently, and I wasn’t fast, but it felt good. People have been saying this forever but I’m finally starting to believe that it can be fun to just do things without being anything close to the best at them.
I never wanted to be a concert pianist. I just liked to play the piano because it was fun, and it didn’t hurt that other people thought I was good at it. Today it was fun. Maybe it will be fun again tomorrow, too.
***
a tiny bit of housekeeping: YES I KNOW I’m behind on my cookie posts. I have things to say. I will post them. Sometimes things don’t come out of your brain in quite the order you want them too.
weary traveler 