What I’ve noticed about my interest in piano is that it waxes and wanes depending on whether or not I feel I have something to learn from it. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the reason I like it so much, while avoiding even approaching the instrument. So take this post as me attempting to encourage myself to return to the instrument.
The last time I tried to play piano was about 6 months ago, when I came up with a goal in my playing. I had been shying away because I couldn’t figure out how to play with both hands at once. I felt clumsy and inadequate, and while that doesn’t always stop me from doing something, in this case I felt thwarted. I had been recommended scales to improve this, but I got bored with that quickly, mainly because I couldn’t tell when I was improving.
But then I came up with the idea of playing a specific song with both my hands. See, the one thing I can play (that I seem to remember from my lessons in middle school) is “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” with my right hand. So I decided to play the song with both hands. Since I knew the song well enough, I’d know when I was messing up, but it was also short enough that I could do it over and over and over again. If I did that for a month, over and over again at least 5-10 minutes per day, I was sure to make a difference.
To say I got immediate results feels like an understatement. I still can’t believe how immediate those results were. The first day I got results.
First of all, my arm felt like it was going to fucking fall off. No wonder every pianist kind of looks and moves like Gumby — I felt soreness and pain in muscles that I didn’t even know could get sore. Pain from my shoulder down straight through my fingers. The second thing was, I could feel the benefits in my brain in a way that left me totally disconcerted.
As I wrote before, part of my interest in piano was trying to reap the benefits of a more connected mind. Playing an instrument can have huge benefits to executive function and to better alignment across both brain hemispheres. The way my brain lit up felt very real, but what shocked me is how this experience felt like it clued me in to something I hadn’t understood before.
I’m very much someone who works from my gut. This year, I’ve realized that even when I try and push back on my intuition or gut feelings, I will find myself snapping back into place. My gut tends to be so loud and aggressive that even when I reason that it doesn’t make sense, I can’t go against my nature. This year has been an arduous journey to trusting my gut (and myself), without constantly questioning or berating myself for doing so.
But what I felt when playing piano — particularly playing it over and over again — is two things. One is I found I had a better articulation of those gut feelings: I could more explain myself using my words while or when I acted, rather than just acting and only find explanations or reasonings later. Sometimes playing was a way for me to start the day, to clarify what was on my mind. I was no longer thinking about ways against my gut feelings so much as elucidating what my gut was trying to tell me. Rather than pushing away my feelings, I let them in instead.
The other thing is, I realized how people can easily function while ignoring their gut.
I’d often felt frustration or suspicion at the way that people’s actions wouldn’t align with their words, but for a while now I’d begun to understand that people don’t have that problem on purpose. While I’m someone who gets frustrated with my inability to explain my actions, most people don’t notice their own cognitive dissonance. And with my tiny morsel of piano playing, I got a sense of how they did that. Piano doesn’t have an effect on my gut, but on my mind. In my mind, I can make any sort of reasonings to explain my actions, particularly when faced with cognitive dissonance — and I believe those reasonings fully, because it helps me function and get through the day. Even if it’s not based on the truth of the matter.
Yes, that’s a lot to get out of playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” over and over again, with both hands.
But it had another benefit for me too. It might’ve been surprising to read how I struggle to articulate myself with words when I’m a writer. But while playing piano, I understood something else: the need and wonder not of emotional regulation, but of emotional expression.
Lately, but almost regularly in my professional writing life, I would want to come to conclusions. To reach an assured, tangible truth that justifies an essay’s existence. It’s not enough for me to write out what I’m thinking or feeling — my writing has to reach a kind of conclusion that gives me permission to have written what I’m thinking or feeling. Me thinking or feeling something is not enough reason for me to express it. My feelings are not to be given space if they don’t have a necessary reason to exist.
As any therapist will tell you, oh boy that’s a for sure way to fuck yourself up!
Intellectualization to preclude emotional expression isn’t anything new; but I think I realized that I don’t have to be doing anything new in order to witness it in myself.
Playing the piano “successfully” — ever so briefly — reminded me of why I turned to writing in the first place: to figure out what I’m feeling. Not what I know, not what I think, not what I believe. Just what I’m feeling — which of course tends to be the kernel of truth of all those previous things. By reminding myself why I turned to writing, piano gave me an opportunity to come back to myself.
Since then, I’ve been striving to write in that emotionally expressive way — by not trying to think through what I feel, but free writing so that my feelings gain shape on the page. Letting my words guide me, like notes on a page that lead to a song. Letting my words appear as I write rather than needing to know what they are before I even approach a keyboard. Letting the rhythm speak more than the content.
I guess part of why I haven’t approached the piano again is I’ve only just been understanding — and reaping — the benefits of my first major foray. But as I write this, I remember: there’s always more to learn.