Piano

Tonight I finally laid hands on the piano again, the piano that has been buried under piles of clothes in my room for almost two years time. I did an hour of hard core playing and then my fingers, arms and shoulders all became pathetically sore. I could no longer deny the fact that not only I have abandoned the piano, the piano has also abandoned me.

I have dropped piano lessons for many years, precisely 10 years now since I was 14, after earning the grade 8 certificate. That year I left for the US where my mother's out of reach to bug me with piano practice. After the US I still moved from school to school and city to city and didn't get much chance to resume my musical life with the piano. The only times I could really flirt a bit with it were those times I moved back home during summers. And I did pick it up quite fast.

Maybe I am always a bit over self-confident in all matters. I thought no matter how long I have been out of practice, I could still pretty much go back to where I left off, I would still know exactly where every notes of my familiar pieces lie, and my fingers would still have almost the same flexibility, if not the same. But tonight Beethoven and Chopin proved that I have been wrong. Maybe it's time to admit that I'm getting old and there are things getting out of my control. I have lost much of the skills and flexibility. Two of my used-to-be-most-well-practiced pieces, Beethoven's Sonata in F minor, Op.2, No.1 and Chopin's Valse (Posthumous), almost sprained my fingers. As I tried to fly my hands all over the keyboard tonight, I could not save my fingers from constantly being tripped over by the black keys and my long nails trapped between the white keys. The melody was still there in my head, but the fingers landed on the wrong notes.

It's a whole new experience with the piano.

Fortunately restoring a relationship with a piano is not as hard as with a person, with some time and patience and love, it will let you play the way you want.