Hammering it Out in Black and White

I have a confession to make:  I have not touched the piano in months.
  

People frequently ask me about the piano when we meet at social occasions.  They assume I must be working on something or toward something—a special piece, a recital, a competition.  I feel a huge sense of guilt when I admit that I have not been playing at all.  The disappointment on people’s faces is hard to disguise and hard to bear.   This year—ever the rationalizer—I have been using my blog as an excuse.  Fulfilling this blog-a-day challenge is not only time consuming, it diverts my creative energies.  Thus, the piano sits idle, mocking me.

To be perfectly truthful, playing the piano is not “fun” for me.  It is hard work.  And like all types of work, I have to have a pretty good reason to do it.  I love being invited to play for special events like college reunions, or to collaborate with friends in the making of chamber music.  Occasionally I will enter a competition and train like an Olympian for three or four years in order to test my mettle against the best.  For these opportunities I will attack the piano with beta blockers and renewed enthusiasm.   But when it comes to having fun, running to the piano is the farthest thing from my mind.

Ah, but then there’s the other side of me, the part that loves music and feels honored to be able to make it for others.  That part of me has been nagging me to play again. The music fills my head—Chopin, mostly—and I long to have it envelope me.   There is nothing as grand as a room filled with musical electricity, knowing that you are its generator.   For a long time I have avoided the living room where my gigantic Steinway stands, regal but silent.  Lately, however, I’ve been inching closer and closer, like a kitten to a catnip mouse.

If I was a politician, they would call me a flip-flopper.  You see, my “secular” side is separated from my religiously musical side by a steep learning curve.  Before I can reach the sweet spot where I enjoy being able to play, I have to commit to a period of intensive conditioning.   There are many false starts—periods of daily practice rituals that lead nowhere.  Eventually the house goes silent again. 

It takes me a long time to learn a piece of music.  It also takes physical training to get me in shape to play.  I have lost count of the times people have said, “Just play something, anything.”  The pieces in my repertoire can be physically challenging; I cannot sit down cold and know that they will spring forth from my stale fingers faithfully.

Then again, I cannot live another day if I believe that I have played my last note.  I am still a pianist and will always be one.  Though the skills and the music lie dormant, I know that I can conjure them again at will, assuming that I am willing to pay the price of time and energy.  There is also my piano “bucket list;” it contains those pieces and events that remain desired yet unclaimed among my personal accomplishments.  Sometimes I feel that keeping those dreams alive is what sustains me; to tick them off the list would leave nothing for which to strive.  On the other hand, to serve out my days without achieving those goals would be a life less lived.

And that’s why on this particular day, second-degree burn on my index finger notwithstanding, I sat down and tickled the keys—just a little.  I played the Chopin C# minor Waltz that I used as a reliable encore as a teenager.  I looked around at the earth tones in my home and felt the need to play some Rachmaninoff.  Then I played a hauntingly beautiful Chopin Mazurka that I worked on last summer after viewing its manuscript in Chopin’s own hand at the Morgan Library.

In the last thirty-five years I have waged a constant battle with my psyche for musical supremacy.  I have so many competing interests and distractions that it is difficult to dedicate the resources that playing demands.  But I never stay away for long—I always come back.   I realize now that I do not play for myself so much as for others, which, although it makes me want it more, renders me more careful and discriminating.  I believe that performance is a public trust; the artist is duty bound to elevate his or her playing in order to be worthy of an audience.

Even as I play today, imagining a program for a competition far on the horizon, I also know that tomorrow the house will be silent.  I feel the stirring, but it is not yet time.    

Tomorrow's blog:  Pushing Buttons with Peru