Damn, I’m having a nice night. By the end of this week, I was starting to feel like I was going to absolutely explode, all spikes protuding and all bile spewing forth. But I had the sense to give myself a total night off, and now I’m feeling just fine. I had the bright idea to ask a coworker to let me borrow his keyboard, and I spent a few hours messing around, and now I feel sooooooo much better.
There are two things that still really HURT about moving to China. I still miss my cats on a daily basis (you can take a crazy cat lady away from her cats, but you can’t … no, that sentence doesn’t work. Anyway, the point is that I’m going to be a crazy cat lady no matter what, and I’d give up a leg to snorgle with my kitties for a few minutes), and I really, really, really miss my piano. I’ve gone to the music store a few times and tried to play, but only wound up getting horribly depressed about forgetting practically everything I knew. But all by myself with just a keyboard and nothing but time, a lot of it started coming back, and it felt SO good to get my hands on some keys without anyone around.
I spent my first two years out of college working on the Ballade in G minor by Chopin, which is a ridiculous, difficult piece that I’d been advised against trying to learn. It’s completely beyond my ability, but I learned the bastard anyway, and by last summer I’d finally gotten it to the point that I was willing to play it in front of other people. Honestly, learning that piece is one of the things I’m the most proud of in my entire life. It’s, well, really, really rocky after seven months away from the piano, of course, but I satisfied myself that it wasn’t completely gone forever, and there are so many tiny little moments in that piece that feel SO GOOD to play.
I’m not any kind of a serious pianist - I do play, and I enjoy it enough to do it every day when I’ve got access to a piano, but that particular piece is special as all hell to me. I get into it in a way that I don’t really get into anything else. And I know I don’t play it as well as it should be played, but it makes me feel so damned good. It’s as over-the-top, loud, hyperemotional, stormy, and bipolar as I would be if I could disable the regulator between my mouth and my brain, and when I’m playing it I feel like it’s a chance to finally try to scream everything I’m too shy, insecure, whatever to say in words.
And Chopin… I’ve had a passionate imaginary relationship with that man ever since my junior year of college. I know it’s cliche to love Chopin, but when it comes down to it, I’m a walking cliche and I don’t mind that. I can defend him well enough - the music he wrote was NOT melodramatic pap, he was actually one of the most important things to happen to the piano since Bach - but at the end of the day, it’s just his melodies that knock me over and make me stop caring about anything else in the world.
Um, yeah, that’s it. I’m going to dance around in my pjs for a bit, then watch some tv, then drink a beer, and go to bed. I LOVE being a grown up, you know? Am I the only one who’s developmentally behind enough to still have moments where I remember how AWESOME it is that I can eat ice cream for breakfast if I want to, turn up my music and dance about like a fool whenever I feel like it, or book exotic vacations to tropical destinations all by myself? After six and a half years of technical adulthood, I’m still not over that.
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