I was consequently thrilled to find the music hall empty one balmy September night. Everyone else on campus was at the monthly swingfest and I could have the grand piano all to myself in carefree solitude.
I hauled a hefty stack of sheet music into the hall and planted myself for the night. I played through book after book - Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, Mozart, the Phantom of the Opera, heck, even the Little Mermaid!
The door to the quad was open, and I could hear people out there, but I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me. All was well with the world!
Then it happened. Somewhere round about Miss Saigon 'He' came in. I was pretty sure he just wanted to use the piano but was a little too drunk and surprised to find a lowly freshman in his way. There were six other pianos on campus, why couldn't he go use one of them? Maybe he thought he was somebody. Or wanted me to think so.
He shuffled around near the stage for a few minutes sipping and sloshing a plastic cup of wine while I pretended I was too absorbed in my music to realize he was there.
"You almost done?"
I pretended to jump, surprised to find someone there, then pretended I didn't care that he was. "O, probably not. Why don't you use the piano in Mellon?" I was here first! Go away! I yelled in my head.
"Eh, it's a long walk and I wanted to use this one. What are you playing anyway?"
"It's Miss Saigon. Have you heard of it?"
"Yeah. Why are you playing that?"
"Well, because I like it." When will he leave?
"Do you ever play anything original?"
"Not since I was 8, I just don't have it in me." I laughed to brush off my bitterness.
"What's the point then? Do you really only play other people's music?!"
Is what I'm doing pointless?
O God, he's right. I'm no musician. I'm just a hack. A pretender leading others to believe I'm something I know I'll never be. I'll never play with an orchestra. At least not one anyone's ever heard of. And I'm hopelessly unoriginal. I have no music of my own, just what I've taken from others and pasted onto myself to hide my nakedness. What is the point?
"Here, can't you play a blues progression?"
I don't know how he did it, but the intruder had taken over half the bench and I was relegated to the lower registers, playing a basic chord progression while he fiddled out a melody over top.
I faked a yawn, thanked him for the lesson, dragged myself and my trove of other people's talent back to my room where I heaved them in a corner and barely touched a piano for ten years after.
I hate that moment. Hate that I was that fragile. Hate that one careless selfish utterance falling from the lips of a stranger could rob me of something that had brought me joy (albeit not
unmixed) for my entire life prior. Hate that beauty can disappear like dandelion seeds in the slightest adverse breeze, leaving behind a dead and colorless stalk.I hate that I may do the same thing to others and never even know it.
I can only hope that those seeds find soil and bloom again.
6 comments:
I'm sorry, Kat. I know you can regain happiness in that regard or at least, I hope that you can.
Like you said, we don't know when we cause the same pain to someone else. My Mom did it to me. I was around 12 and had composed my first composition on the piano. I was relating a thunderstorm into music and had a definite progression of which keys came when, etc... I wasn't just banging on the keys and I was proud of my accomplishment. Unknowingly, she told me something to the effect of "Knock that racket off" not realizing that it was a composition with defined notes, a clear beginning and a clear end. I didn't write again until my 20's and at that point I let Jeff hear it and he said something to the effect of "What, are you going to write music now?" You know, I had an art degree... why was I now turning to another interest. Perhaps he didn't mean it but that's how I interpreted it.
Somehow we have to all find healing and move beyond this unintentional wounds while at the same time trying to be self aware enough to not inflict them on others.
Cruel and nasty ... these flippant comments from others the wound us deeply.
My monster was an apparently well meaning writer in residence at uni. I was 18 and had been deeply and passionately in love with writing since I was 12 and wrote my first extended work (100+ A4 pages!) I gave him a short story I was really proud of - it was called 'And Juliet joined Romeo in hell' ... I gave it to this guy to read, he quickly skimmed through it and told me something along that lines that it was naive and the best advice he could give me was to go out and live in the real world.
I was CRUSHED. I'd had adoring teenage friends who had devoured my writings and a string of English teachers and straight A's to tell me that I could write ... and there is was, from the horse's mouth ... While it definitely dampened the fire and thirst to write, I did get back to writing, but it was almost another 10 years before I ever allowed any to ever read my work again ... and it was with great trepidation I let my lovely boyfriend at the time read, and then edit that story - I think that its currently posted on my blog!
Blogging has been the best antidote for me ... even having edited and written an editorial each time for 11 magazines, it was only through gaining confidence in people reading my work on the internet, that I actually wrote my first proper editorial last magazine.
A friend says to me that the 'stick and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me' adage is actually wrong .... that words harm as much, if not more than actions. We internalise those words and take them on as our own! I'm glad that we're opening the doors to our demons ... and like I wrote on Friday... drawing a line in the sand that says 'this ends here'.
Kat - I'd love to share a piano stool with you one day ... that's one of my greatest loves - playing duets.
god, how did I miss this?? what a beautifully written memory - story??
Kat are you ok?
Memory, yes. Thanks.
Harry Chapin wrote a song about a a dry cleaner I think it was called mister tanner. I once used it as the reason that I would not take up music for a living. "music was his life not his livelyhood". It is still mine all these 30 years later and I hold tight my guitar and the time I get to play. I dont write I play others music but it is still just as big a part of me.
guess you gave up on writing this blog. Too bad your first entry was very well written.
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