[I wrote this late last night, but the stupid internet was being finicky, so I gave up trying to post it. Here it is now, 16 hours later...]
I went to a concert tonight, where three young professional musicians played Brahms' first piano trio. And then I came home and cried, and cried, and cried.
I don't know why it is that piano is still one of the few things that brings me to tears. It's not like I spend lots of time dwelling on it, wishing I could play better, and it's not like I'm often inspired to sit down at the keys and just... play. Piano is no longer really a part of my daily life, and for the most part, I've moved on to other things, I think. Things like philosophy, literature, writing, politics, social engagement. Music keeps moving farther and farther back into my past, ever more just a thing of my childhood.
So why does it upset me so much when I'm confronted with it? I sit through a thrilling performance and I come home miserable instead of exhilarated. And it's not a grumpy, cross sort of miserable, it's a deep, throbbing, aching misery. As if someone I loved had died--my heart is just being squeezed and wrung out until eventually I'll just drop exhausted into a still, dreamless sleep. I just can't handle being confronted with the loss of piano.
I was twelve, and I'd been playing for six years, when I got my first injury, tendinitis in my right forearm. That slowed me down quite a bit. And then three years later I injured my right wrist again and got surgery for it a year after that. That more or less stopped me. For two years I couldn't play with my right hand, and while I, in an effort at being valiant, continued playing with my left hand, I also knew that I would never have a future in piano. So the same girl who at 12 had dreamed of becoming a concert pianist had at 17 abandoned all aspirations to and hopes of a career in music. I still play occasionally, but I rarely feel the impulse anymore, and when I DO play, I just get frustrated that I've lost so much agility and technique, and that I can't play as well as I could six years ago. And I just don't have the time to devote myself to piano again; I'm doing other things now, things that also are meaningful to me.
It may be that what makes me so sad is the feeling of bitterness of the injustice of it--why did I have to get injured? Why twice? Why me? I wasn't given the proper chance to develop my full potential, to show the world what This Pianist had in her. And I had ideas, I had lots of ideas about what I would play and how I would play it; I knew where I would perform and what I would wear at the performances; I knew who would conduct the concertos and which orchestras would accompany me. I only lacked technique, and that was the only thing that I was prevented from improving because of my injuries. So perhaps it is the bitterness towards those things beyond my control that makes me so emotional about piano today.
But I think there might be another piece, another reason why I mourn, and why I still can't move on and can't stop regretting. There's a large part of me that wonders whether I gave enough effort. If I'd tried a little harder, if I'd practiced more anyway, if I'd had enough motivation, if I hadn't given up--if if if--then maybe I could have succeeded anyway. It's this nagging feeling that I gave up prematurely, that, perhaps, I gave up because I knew I would never be the best, and couldn't stand being something less. I wonder whether I should have kept playing, kept going, kept giving all I had, and then, maybe, I'd have something to show for it now.
But I didn't, I chose other things. And now I'm at a point in my life where I'm going to have to start narrowing things down again, and start choosing some things over other things. Start working towards a career, in something. And I'm afraid, so afraid, that each choice to DO something means that I will have to NOT do something else, and that, ever after, that loss will torment me.
I can't live if I'm going to be constantly tormented by losing things that are important to me. But I don't know how to make it stop.
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