The Fool, the Piano and a Phantom Called Stage Fright

The specter Bridesgroom from Ghosts & Spirits Tarot

The Specter Bridegroom from Ghosts & Spirits Tarot

I love the piano. To me, the keys are allegorical. They are emotive, mysterious, scary and can be a girl’s best friend. They can feel hard and cold, slippery and wet, warm and soft–all depending on what is being played and how it’s being played. I’ve cried tears on the keys and have stroked them with affection. They help bring mind, soul and hands to a place where musical narratives can flow with their cleansing tendencies. In German, this is called “Seele waschen” or soul washing. It’s the seele waschen that has kept me from completely abandoning my relationship with the piano. Even when I wasn’t playing it (sometimes years between), I would listen to its soft whispers in my mind. Piano has always been there with me, through everything I’ve done in life.

I was fortunate enough to have classical training as a child with a music professor whose own son started at the same time and went on to Juilliard and beyond. He was committed. I was the rebel. He had the discipline. I had preoccupations. He went on to be a great pianist. I rejected the instrument by 14 thinking how clever I was to do so. I turned my back on the piano–I had “piano hands”, “a good ear”, an aptitude at the start, but I wanted to be emancipated from the practicing regimen and lost sight of the piano’s purpose in my life.

This is only a half truth. What really happened? In the eight grade, I auditioned for a talent show doing keyboards with my friends Mike and Maura on vocals. The performance was a disaster and I swore to myself that I would never play in front of people again.

and I didn’t.

Until now, 30 years later.

I had dabbled on piano over the years, but it was largely ignored until my own daughter started playing with an intensity that brought me back to an innocent time of being the enthusiastic student who wanted to learn how to play. Those feelings, the yearning to learn, grow and feel something awesome as one plays flooded me with an unexpected reawakening. I knew what I had to do.

I restarted piano lessons and fell madly in love with the learning process. I was now the fool with her piano and it felt wonderful to be reunited with my old friend.

Here I am practicing at home. The glasses are just for fun:

Just four months after my first lesson, I was performing in front of a roomful of mostly strangers. My playing was not great as the piano had a few more lessons to teach me: humility and respect. Just because I thought I knew my pieces and thought I played good enough doesn’t mean the piano keys were going to completely cooperate when it had to. My brain took momentary vacations between measures and my fingers decided to engage in interludes of abstraction. At one point, I went completely blank–forgetting everything I knew about piano. Has that ever happened to you? The dreaded disconnect between mind and hands did happen while I was playing in front of a room full of curious people, but somehow my soul held it together. I kept going on and didn’t give up. I showed the piano that I had fortitude and that I wasn’t going to cower to self perceived failure. I was determined to finish what I started no matter what.

Here I am performing at my first recital ever, mistakes and all:

I finished to loud applause and got a big hug from my teacher. I think the fact that I made it through was enough to generate support from the kind strangers who bore witness to my tenacity. I had the courage to face the piano as a new, old student without losing myself along the way. One woman even came up to me and told me how great she thought I was and she herself had thought about playing again. Can it be that maybe just maybe I had inspired her? If that is true, then it was SO worth going up there as the fool and her intrepid piano playing. I’d like to think that I’ve inspired my daughter as well. Hopefully she will get past the age 14-hump 8 years from now and realize that sticking to it is the clever thing to do.

My brilliant teacher told me that stage fright is like a naughty phantom. When it happens, it’s an invaluable experience. “It is like an initiation ceremony for the stage”. She is already talking about the next time I go through it as if the “naughty stage fright phantom” is a permanent fixture on the stage, so to speak. Instead of pretending it’s not there, one must be prepared to deal with it!

With that said, I’m sticking to it with no intentions of ever straying from my musical path again. Fortunately, I found a kindred spirit in my amazing teacher and friend Sivabruntha, who has been undyingly supportive and encouraging of me. I will blog along the way, through tangled wood and smooth riding pathways. Music is art and art is music. I don’t do art and music perfectly, but I have the passion to do it and that is what is really important. As my friend Patrick Valenza recently told me: “It’s the process, not the outcome”. Well said, my friend.