I Thought I'd Forgotten How to Enjoy It!

It has been so long since I sat down at the piano just to play. Not to compose, not to practice the Hanon Scales, not to struggle and sweat over new pieces. Today, I actually sat down, opened up a sonata book and played some Beethoven and Mozart just for the hell of it. I was surprised, really. I played as badly as I ever have...
Hey, at least I wasn’t any worse! I ended up playing through some of my own music, not listening to the clangers or the lack of strict rhythm. I didn’t critique myself even once. I just played, liking the way the keys felt beneath my fingers and marveling at how the hands seem to be able to think for themselves and possess a sense of memory, even when they haven’t played certain pieces for more than a decade. I can’t wait to play again tomorrow morning. And the morning after that.
Working professionally in music for so many years — especially in classical music — had nearly destroyed my ability to just enjoy the process of playing an instrument. During my six-year stint with the Ventura County Symphony I became tremendously self-critical and although my love of music never waned, my confidence certainly did, and that eventually helped to keep me from playing at all. Of course (and I know it’s not their fault), having a wife who’s a professional opera singer, a best friend who’s a professional accompanist and another friend who happens to be the professor of music history at our local university hasn’t helped. But the real problem is my own lack of musical self-esteem. Let’s face it. I write with the confidence and clarity that I wish I did for music. Why, after pursuing a musical career for over thirty years, did it take me until the age of 43 to realize writing was my true gift? Or at least the better of my two true gifts?
Being an autodidact certainly has its down side. When asked, “Where did you study?” I would answer, “I’m self-taught” and then watch the inevitable air of superiority wash over the face of the other person. What was bad about this tendency of mine to diminish myself was that instead of a completed college career (I did finish three years, however) and obtaining a degree, I was actually taught privately by the conductor of the symphony for six years. I’ve actually had what was considered, until the mid-20th century, the most desirable of educations. None of the great composers of the Baroque and Classical eras — and very few from the Romantic era — had formal educations in music. Mozart? He was taught at home by his father and privately by J.C. Bach. He did spend two weeks studying counterpoint at a school in Italy, however, but two weeks? Pfft!
Lately, I’m being confronted by issues from thirteen years ago when I left California, my musical mentor, my friends and my music career to move to Denver to take care of my father, who was dying of cancer. I moved from a three-bedroom house with a glorious garden I’d created from nothing and which I tended between long, fruitful hours of composition, into a basement apartment (in November no less) in a house that smelled of illness and death. I changed colostomy bags, sponge-bathed my dad, swept up the dead skin from chemotherapy. I tried to compose with a baby monitor on my piano so that I could know if my dad needed me for anything. I heard every moan, every sigh, every cry of pain. This went on for a year and then he died, along with my music. Besides the gloom my life had become, I also acquired SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), which wasn’t helped by my bouts of wine over-consumption at night when my mother kept an eye on my dad. I then fell into a destructive relationship that lasted about four years, but that only caused more problems, so the issues surrounding my previous situation were sublimated by my need just to survive. I’ve been over the relationship for a long time now, but the earlier problems are now demanding some attention.
I didn’t even intend to play today. I really don’t know why I sat down at the piano in the first place. I walk past it a hundred times a day and never see it — unless it needs to be dusted — I don’t know why today was different. But now, I feel that delving again into music is the medicine I need in order to get that love affair with the Muse back.
It feels damned good, too. I’m going to go sit on the front porch with a glass of wine and watch the rain.