Piano

It’s only been during the past several months that I’ve started playing my piano again.  I sit at the bench for hours, usually in the evenings, contemplating the music I could play as I refresh Facebook.  I feed the cats.  The later it gets, the more likely it becomes that I will actually be playing at any given moment, until it’s midnight and I’m choosing and discarding music–Chopin, Debussy, a bit of Beethoven–playing a few bars of each until I’m satisfied that the selection matches the music that’s trying to shake itself out of my fingers.

I know how the music should sound.  I’m playing pieces that I played before, years ago, before all of the music inside of me went flat, and I know how they should go: the melody, the dynamics, the high points.  After a false start or two, my fingers remember what to do, sometimes better than I do.  It’s a matter of blending the pedal at the right moment, striking the keys with the right sharpness, somehow breathing it all into the phrasing that makes the music music.

And then I hit a wrong note, and another.  Sometimes I let a short cascade of them tumble out of my hands before aborting my attempt.  Sometimes I know before the note sounds that it’s about to be the wrong one, but there’s nothing I can do about it; it’s too late to stop what I’ve set in motion and command my fingers to halt.

Sometimes I simply start over, perhaps a little louder, a little faster, in my impatience.  Sometimes I hit two or three horrible chords, very loudly, on purpose, to vent my frustration.

Sometimes, I say, “fuck.”

Sometimes, I say it more than once.

Sometimes, I say it loudly.

I start the piece again, still knowing how it should go, even knowing what I must do to make it sound that way, and I play it wrong again.  Again and again.