When I begin a project, I have great energy and enthusiasm for it. I get projects underway at amazing speed—astounding my friends and family. And if the project is not too big and does not take too long, I can even finish it.
What is much harder for me to do is to stay the course as long as it takes when it takes forever.
My definition of forever is getting longer, though—it used to be a month or two when I was young, so that I could barely make it through one semester of school. I can do six months or a year now—maybe even two years.
This is why I’ve been very frustrated with my piano practice lately. I have outgrown the music for beginners—where you keep your hands in one place on the keyboard and phrases are repeated so that pieces are easy to learn and even to memorize.
I have also outgrown the amazing feat of beginning to learn the piano at the age of seventy, even though my teacher still brags about it. Thanks to me, she can tell thirty and forty and fifty year olds that it is never too late to begin.
The music for early beginners is too boring to me now. But the intermediate pieces my teacher has been giving me seem too hard. I spent three weeks trying to memorize Bach’s Minuet in G Major recently—without success.
I’m used to doing things well and getting them finished. When I started writing a play in a class last fall, I finished that play by the end of the semester. I’m already working on a new one.
But learning how to play the piano, I see now, is a life-long project. The pieces get harder, not easier, to play. I sometimes end the day’s piano practice feeling that I’m regressing, not progressing.
I’ve been taking piano lessons for almost two years now. So has my granddaughter Rachel, but I can’t compare myself to her. She has a natural ability and was already playing another instrument before she started the piano.
I am a harsh judge of myself, however, and so I am often disappointed in my practice and questioning whether I should even go on.
Only by going on, however, will I move out of this muddle into something more accomplished. It may take years, and I may not have them, but it is the path with heart.
Do I believe that?
I guess I'll have to take it on faith.
Geese on the frozen pond at Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, NY, last week.
Note: Yes, dear reader, I've written about this topic before (see below). But I'm 72 years old now and can't be expected to remember what I wrote a few months ago. I also can't remember how long I've actually been playing the piano, but sometimes it does seem like forever.
