Use it or lose it...

and I don't want to lose it.

I started playing piano from a very young age. When I was six and I would sit down at the old upright piano in my grandparents’ dining room and noodle around, attempting to play Fur Elise. I couldn’t read music but I knew what it was supposed to sound like and I slowly worked out how to play just the right hand. We lived in Brisbane and visited their home in Sydney very rarely so my opportunities were few and far between until my mother eventually re-homed the piano in our house. For a long time, sitting down at that piano was a daily occurrence.

Same piano, different location. This is in my parent’s current place of residence.

When I was 10, I began taking lessons. I was eager to advance and was diligent in my practice, particularly my exercises - I can still remember them. They were designed for dexterity. When I was learning, I repeated the movements of the exercises on any surface on which my hands rested, unable to quieten my mind which was eager to retain the muscle memory.

I don’t recall the evolution of my playing but eventually, I was able to tackle new pieces as the fancy took me. I had obtained sufficient knowledge of music theory to be able to interpret the sheet music, having also played the clarinet in school bands. I didn’t need my tutor to explain the notes, timings or the symbols on the page. As I got into my teens, I began to tackle more challenging pieces, Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata were the early pieces. However, after seeing the movie Shine, I felt I had enough base knowledge and ability to work on the ‘Rach 3’, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No3 in D minor. Spoiler alert, I did not conquer the Rach 3 and if you’ve ever listened to it being played (all 42 minutes of it), you will know it is the Everest of piano pieces.

Moonlight Sonata was perhaps one of my favourite pieces to play. In times of emotional turmoil, I would retreat to the sunroom, sit down on the worn embroidered piano stool, rest my fingers on the keys and begin playing. Immediately, the minor key, the lilting melody, undulating against my troubled adolescent mind like a boat being caressed by gentle waves on a calm sea, instilling in me, a sense of peace. My playing became a metaphor for the thoughts I could not articulate. I would lean hard on the sustain pedal, I’d open the lid of the piano, encouraging the sound to escape its confines and envelop me in its warm resonance. It was my solace. It was my refuge. I don’t even recall reading the music as I played. My fingers just knew where to go and when. My ear knew at what interval the next note should be, the accidentals, the switch to the bass clef in the treble. My fingers knew it all instinctually.

Everywhere I went, I made sure there was a piano. Even when I lived in New Zealand, I managed to acquire a piano from a local resort and brought it home. There was no room for it. Logically, it made no sense at all to have it, but I was determined to have it and to play it, even if my back was jammed firmly against the stairwell while I did it.

When I moved to Sydney in my early 20s, the first thing I did was buy a piano. I had no money. I couldn’t pay my bills. I could barely afford food or rent but I had just had my heart broken, I was rebuilding my life and damn it… I was going to have my piano! I found a place in Canterbury where I could rent to buy a piano. I remember going into the showroom and seeing a big white and pink baby grand, immediately thinking to myself that only Elton John would purchase something quite so audacious. I wandered aimlessly until I found my little upright Mignon piano. It was the first new piano I had ever played. It sounded so nice. The timbre was so much more refined than the 100+ year old piano I had played up to that point. I signed my contract and purchased my first (and only) piano.

At the time, I was living in my grandparents old house. I occupied the front room which could easily accommodate my new acquisition. Once again, in the midst of my ennui, I would sit at my piano, and play the pieces I knew yearning for the comfort they once brought me.

I’ve had my piano for twenty-four years now. However, for a large portion of the previous twelve, it has sat dormant, “crouched in the corner of the room with all it’s teeth bared”¹, lingering as an open invitation to play if ever I had the time or the will to do so. For a long time I had neither.

That was, until Emily Farallon started talking about practicing piano, and in particular, Moonlight Sonata. I began to reminisce about how much I loved playing and an urgency to reconnect with the keys started to grow.

Yesterday, I sat down and fumbled my way through Moonlight Sonata and Fur Elise. I couldn’t read the notes. There are no notes in drum music. The ‘notes’ represent parts of the drum kit. My mind was not adequately prepped for the lines and spaces to correspond to 88 keys. The muscle memory and musical ear on which I previously so heavily relied, were not tools at my disposal, now barely audible echoes in my mind. I sat there counting the spaces “F A C E”… before moving to “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit” squinting at the page, desperately trying to make out the characters. In short, my attempt yesterday was a hot mess.

Today I tried again. I sat down believing my success rate was predetermined and alarmingly bleak, but regardless, I started to play. First, Moonlight Sonata before moving onto Fur Elise. I got through most of both pieces, not playing with both hands in every part but in the majority. I made a tonne of mistakes and I had to read and interpret the music to stand any chance at all, but from yesterday to today, there was a marked improvement.

I then recalled a story that my husband recently shared with a friend while we were loitering in the aisles of the local supermarket. He said that one day, he came home and I was sitting at my piano, playing Bohemian Rhapsody … and in that moment he said to himself “I’m going to marry this woman”. I did not know that my piano playing had such an impact. This was entirely news to me until a few weeks ago. So today I attempted to play that song… it was not good, but it got better… and it will continue to do so the more I play.

I practiced long and hard to get to the point of being able to play those pieces proficiently and I derived great joy from doing it. I sacrificed my playing so willingly because I had to … but I don’t have to anymore and I don’t want to lose what I had. So I’m going to keep playing. I’m going to keep trying to regain the lost knowledge. I’m going to keep going until that magical sleeper-agent trigger is activated, wherein all my pre-programming will fall back into place and it will be as if my partnership with the piano was never forced apart.

1. Cave, N, (2000), [Hallelujah], No More Shall We Part [CD].