I stopped playing the piano when I was 14.
I hated the piano–I hated practicing, I hated performing, and I hated lessons. I hated when my old piano was out of tune, I hated the bench I somehow broke, and I hated how the keys of the grand piano were so off-putting compared to what I was used to. It was a miserable experience for me.
Ever since I started when I was about six years old–I really wanted to play the guitar, but my mom said piano was a good place to start–I wanted to quit. I wasn’t even a year in before I was begging my mom not to make me practice for half an hour a day. Whenever possible, I would weasel my way out of practicing or going to lessons.
Even when I was one of the top students at my studio, I still didn’t care. I only had experience, and I lacked passion. Classic songs bored me with their antiquated tunes, and pop songs toyed with my attention span as I tried to decipher their complicated rhythms.
When I first started performing at concerts and competitions, I would subconsciously tremble. I didn’t feel nervous on the outside–I didn’t care enough to. But something about the pressure still made me quake. I despised the feeling of being enveloped by physical fear while my mind didn’t give a single thought to the consequences.
And yet, three years after I quit playing piano, I still find myself sitting on the bench before the keys. When boredom hits, my buried sentiments arise.
Muscle memory takes over, and I can still play the fairly complex songs I learned most thoroughly for concerts. The keys play themselves, and the song returns to me like riding a bike, albeit with stumbles and missed notes along the way.
I am suddenly hit with the rare pleasant memory–the moments where I could stir in the moment and be amazed by myself for creating such sounds. I finally understand the melodramatics of piano players in these times; I understand why their body ebbs and flows with their music. I am enlightened to a further musical domain, and I bask in it for the brief moment that it lasts.
I still hate the piano, and unfortunately for my mom, I will not be playing at weddings, church, or the Arnie’s on 28th Street. But once in a while, I find myself enjoying the tunes that flow from the keys—I allow my emotions to be elicited by the songs. Opening the page to an old song and letting the nostalgia tickle the keys is something I never expected from the piano; yet, in moderation, I feel young again.
