For a change of scenery, I turned my back on every song I had practiced over the past year and went classical. My music collection is tiny, composed of a few Disney songbooks, the standard church hymns, the Children's Songbook, the Piano Guys music book, and a thick spiral bound book of Favorite Piano Classics. The piano classics were the only songs I did not play while practicing for church. Beethoven, Mozart, and Debussy may be uplifting and glorious, but they are not musically similar to the hymns and children's songs we sing at church, so they were the extra credit I did not have time for during my sojourn as church primary pianist.
Now in the peaceful green pastures of piano retirement, I have turned from rote religious music to the flowing, graceful notes of Fur Elise and Claire de Lune. When I want to get my blood pumping, I attempt Mozart's Alla Turca or pound out Jon Schmidt's Waterfall (not in the classical book, but a long-time energetic favorite of mine). During the months I spent practicing to play for church, I learned that playing a musical instrument can be a form of meditation. It is a fascinating balance of mind and body. The mind and body have to work together but the result is the creation of beautiful music that allows the mind to flow along a different plane of thought, on sound waves created by the union of mind and fingers. It's a complex web of positive feedback.
All of this flowery description of piano playing makes it sound like I can sit down and bust past the barrier at the end of page one of any given Mozart, or as if I can flow straight through Claire de Lune smooth as butter. Nope. I get stuck about 2/3 of the way down the first page of Claire de Lune, skip the next few lines, and pick up a few measures later on. My playing is stuttery, full of mistakes, and impressively imperfect. Sometimes when I think "oooh, I'm getting the hang of this!" I get out my phone and record myself playing. Hah! Talk about putting my piano-ing into perspective. Even my best song--Fur Elise--is only buttery smooth for a few measures at a time. But those measures are bliss! Then I fumble again and comfort myself with the reminder that nobody can live on butter alone.
In spite of my Beethoven bliss, every time I butcher poor Elise or another classical pillar, I find myself mentally apologizing to the composers and all of the masters who have performed these fine works over the intervening centuries. I think about all of the thousands of piano students who have trudged their way through these same notes. Here I am, doing the same ole low-level trudge through the same exact notes. Today as I played a particularly smooth series of four lines in Fur Elise and felt the accompanying rush of euphoria, I realized that it is ok! I am allowed to love playing this music, even if I am not good at it. I am allowed to love playing it even if I never get very good at it. Why carry the weight of great pianists on my shoulders when all I want to do is escape to Elise's warm flowery meadow for a few minutes each day? Who cares if my road to that meadow is a giant mud pit full of hidden rocks? I am not required to perform these songs. Ever. I am finally playing just for ME. I am not unworthy of the beauty in the music just because I am playing the notes hesitantly and imperfectly.
But isn't the point of practicing piano so that I can play music for others' enjoyment? NO. That is one possible reason to play the piano, but I am realizing that it is not the only one! I am allowed to play the piano just for myself. If I choose to play for others, I can, but I don't have to carry around the heavy burden of random ears! That sounds gross anyways--a bag of ears? Yuck. This winter when I listened to Elizabeth Smart's book My Story, one of the unexpected lessons I learned was that playing a musical instrument can be both an outlet and a source of healing. That lesson was one of the inspirations for me to slowly start playing the piano again after my post-release break. I started viewing piano playing as a healing activity.
It was a subtle but powerful mental shift. I went from practicing piano out of desperation and duty to playing piano as a form of self-care and an emotional outlet--a way to heal from the rigors of everyday life. It doesn't matter how my piano-playing sounds, as long as I am getting what I need from it! A few months ago my piano practicing goal was to serve others by playing somewhat competently so the kids at church could sing along or sit and listen. Serving through music is a noble goal, and I'm sure at some point I will be asked to play in church again. But the workload--both mental and physical--involved in my preparation to serve in that unique way left little time or energy for me to pursue piano for any other reason. I do not in any way begrudge the time it took to sharpen my piano-playing for church; I am grateful for it because it taught me numerous spiritual lessons and also required discipline that advanced my piano skills up several levels. Now I feel free to coast on those resuscitated skills, maintaining them while playing piano not only for the fun of it, but also as a way to meditate, connect, and care for my soul. Maybe self-care is actually soul-care.
Well I sat down to write about something entirely different, but speaking of soul-care...
The sun is out and spring is here! I love how the kids want to play outside again. It is so good for everyone's sanity.
Amber and I sat in the sunshine on the front porch (after cleaning all of the accumulated dirt off of our rocking chairs). Amber ate Cheezits while I read a book. The medicine of solar Vitamin D is effective even through a down jacket and long pants.
No comments:
Post a Comment