RiverBender Blog: Smells Like Teen Spirit, Sounds Like Bach

Over ten years ago, in a moment of teenage angst, I decided to rebel against my parents the best way I knew how. My father is a rock-n-roller, a guitarist who has played gigs in a Guns N' Roses tribute band, who taught me to say “I love RUSH” as one of my first full sentences. In short, my parents are cool. I needed to be different.

What better way to do that than by learning classical piano?

That’s right. As my parents listened to Alice in Chains and Nirvana, I stubbornly filled the house with the sounds of Beethoven. That’ll show them, I thought as I pounded out a fugue.

Of course, I’m kidding. My decision to learn piano wasn’t really about rebelling, but that was a nice touch. In reality, I also like rock n roll, and my ever-supportive parents happily listened to me play showtunes. There was very little rebellion involved in my teenage years.

But still, the point is that I learned how to play piano. I wasn’t a child prodigy; I didn’t start playing until I was 14, and it took some time to catch up to those impressive kids who can hammer out beautiful melodies at age 4. But I devoted hours every week to learning, and soon I was holding my own.

A big part of this was thanks to my teacher, an elderly pianist who intimidated and inspired me in equal measure. She would trace her gnarled fingers along the sheet music, pointing out notes I had missed or offering praise where I had succeeded.

I came to revere her. Sometimes she’d have me scoot over on the bench and she’d play the music herself, showing me what it would sound like once I had mastered it. Those were my favorite moments, seeing her in her element. When she passed away, part of my passion for the piano, so intertwined with my love for her, died, too.

I didn’t touch the piano for a while. It became a complicated thing. My life was moving in different directions; I was in college, I was busy, I was trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted and what I enjoyed versus what I had previously forced myself to do in the name of perfectionism and success.

The piano had always been a passion, but it was also a discipline. It required a lot of self-control, hours of hard work. I fell out of love with it for a while.

But now, I’m starting to wonder if I should return. I played a few Christmas songs over the holidays and enjoyed the feeling of the keys, the muscle memory that came over me as I played my favorite songs for the first time in a long time. I dragged a keyboard up the stairs of my apartment complex and hooked it up and played through a C-major scale. There was joy in it.

Even if I don’t return to the piano with the same ferocity as I once had, I think I’m going to give it a shot in the new year. The goal is to play without perfectionism. Less focus on my inevitable mistakes as I take up this instrument again, and more attention paid to the fun of making music. After all, isn’t that the point?

I’m considering signing up for formal lessons again so I can have a routine, a little bit of healthy pressure to practice. Or maybe, as I begin playing, I’ll unlock those lessons from ten years ago and all of the music theory I learned will come back to me.

Well, probably not. But I guess we’ll see! There’s no shame in trying.

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