Upon getting out of your offline hiatus on Saturday, you chatted to me about Isaac’s progression with piano. The row, your life pep talk and his response.
It’s not the first time we’ve talked about it, and every time we do, I continue to reflect on my own musical journey afterwards. What am I doing about it? Am I doing anything at all? Where do I want to go from here? These are questions that haunt me, not only in the realms of piano, but in many other areas of my life as well. And that, that’s a problem.
What I ultimately want to achieve with piano is to really hone in on my skills, and play truly emotively. Most of it (like Isaac’s situation) is consistency, so that I’m making every. lesson. worth it. Short term, I’d like to sit for my Certificate of Performance in June next year. It may seem like a long time, but in the grand scheme of things (uni, work, friends), it’s not long at all. And don’t tell anyone, I hope to do it ‘on my own’. What I mean is, I’d like to go in to my exam, without Mum’s knowledge, and just do it. Is that weird? I guess from grade 8 till now, piano has felt like such a personal journey to me, and I want to keep it that way. Plus, less pressure on me if the mothership doesn’t know (you’d understand, being on the other end yourself).
The problem with piano, though, as I mentioned before, is that I’m not sure whether it deserves all the focus that I’m giving it right now. I face a different problem from Isaac… my problem is – is the time I’m giving it, leading me to lose focus? But then again… I can’t imagine my life without it. It’s like Isaac wanting to sell the piano – I don’t want to throw my love for piano away. It’s not even the skills I’m talking about… just having something that I really like is so wonderful, so wonderful that it doesn’t matter if it’s not going to be my career, my bread and butter. It’s my jam, you know? (Oh, you know you liked that pun ;)