Finding Momentum

so my final les­son with my piano teacher was today, and there was some­thing about it that felt so final.

i dont think i’d ever felt so free while play­ing.. some­thing inside me sort of unlocked. yet at the same time there was a bit of regret and doubt. aw man.. i knew i’d start to regret my deci­sion to take a few months off, but i didnt know it’d start so soon.

i saw a dif­fer­ent side of her today.. for per­haps the first time in a long time, i could see that she cared about how i played. she cared about my skill and my talents.

see for the longest time i fig­ured that she must have hated me by now. i mean, what stu­dent prac­tices so lit­tle and comes to lessons so unpre­pared? i’m prac­ti­cally the old­est stu­dent in her stu­dio.. and here are these youn­guns who quite pos­si­bly kick my butt. to put it this way: i was a dis­grace to her, and i under­stood that. it wasnt fair to her for me to sub­ject her to frus­tra­tion over me.

“andrew, maybe you just don’t have the patience to sit down and prac­tice. is that the reason?”

i admit­ted to that. whole­heart­edly. truth is that the real rea­son i needed to take a leave of absence from piano was that i hated to practice.

i hated to see that i couldn’t mas­ter the melodies that some­how mirac­u­lously flowed from her fin­gers. i couldn’t per­fect the rhythms and dynam­ics and the feel­ing of the piece to do it jus­tice. i’d sit at the piano for hours some­times, bang­ing out the same unin­spired melodies, each pro­gres­sively worse than the pre­vi­ous. it got to the point where i was exhausted by it.. some­how i could not find the source of the music within me.

and so i gave up.

today, i will com­pletely give up. i have to. there’s no inspi­ra­tion to be found in merely touch­ing the life­less keys. there’s no joy in frustration.

i once remem­bered play­ing a Cop­land piece that was so impos­si­ble to mas­ter but i loved how it sounded. every sin­gle key­stroke, every chord and every melodic pro­gres­sion i would revel in the genius of the music and mar­vel that i was cre­at­ing it. it may have taken a whole year to mas­ter, but i did it. and i loved it.

today, i will com­pletely give up. cuz some­how along the way, i lost my inspiration.

after the les­son there was an awk­ward silence between us. i got up to leave. star­ing at the floor, i could only muster a barely audi­ble “thank you”.

“good luck andrew. i hope you will want to come back again.”

and at that point, i wanted to hug her. i wanted to thank her for putting up with me for all my four years with her.

but how can you hug some­one who’s torn you apart? left you hurt and near tears on numer­ous occa­sions? ripped apart your self esteem?

no, i told myself. not today. i couldnt let myself do that.

i need time to change myself. i need time to reevaluate.

and i’m sorry to those of you who read this entry and have no clue what i’m talk­ing about.. i just needed to write this out to myself.

there’s so many sides to me.. the happy-go-lucky guy you see at school, the come­dian, the stu­dious nerd.. the over­e­mo­tional wee­nie… the inse­cure lil kid.. and some­times i’m not sure who i’m sup­posed to be.

and this post just got way off topic. but yeah, point is that these are some of the tough things you gotta do in life.

let it go.