Pianist, c'est moi!
Three years ago, homing down on my twilight years, I decided to start piano lessons. Why? How? My son’s girlfriend has been playing and studying since age six, now doing Chopin on an electronic piano. That looked affordable. Now, finally, I could realize the unfulfilled, frustrated, forgotten wish of my childhood. But who would take on an aging adult? I Googled and found Sheldon Landa....So I started. Now, into my fourth year, I am still at the starting gate. My fingers still wander like willful, incurious toddlers. My ears are still tuned to tin. I can read the score but my eye-hand coordination often fails me. I am not yet fused musically, technically to the keyboard. And why can’t I count rhythmically?But I play on. And, lo-and-behold, I have become smarter, cognitively sharper. It just happened. I noticed after my first year of piano lessons that my short term memory was back to full early adulthood capacity. I was retaining new information (even pianistic) with greater ease and facility. And these neurobiological benefits have been scientifically validated in this fascinating piece "How music training enhances working memory: a cerebrocerebellar blending mechanism that can lead equally to scientific discovery and therapeutic efficacy in neurological disorders.".
"Remember how it felt to finally get on a bicycle and make it ride free and straight? Learning the piano (even at my slow crawl) is just like that."
After delving into the piano I signed up for subscriptions to solo piano performances at Carnegie Hall. I sat in nosebleed seats with binoculars and stared at the hands delivering incredible musical salvos with the kind of speed, alacrity, and nuance that still enchants and mystifies me. My goal at my piano is never to reach that kind of imperium.So why do I stick with it? I love the feeling of new personal growth. Remember how it felt to finally get on a bicycle and make it ride free and straight? Learning the piano (even at my slow crawl) is just like that. And there’s the added plus—a big plus—of making music.Last Spring, having just aced the song (after months of toil and trouble), “Singin' in the Rain,” I happened to be in the Ca’ Pesaro Museum in Venice. Its huge lobby was nearly empty save for an upright piano at the far end. It had a sign that read, “Play Me” in Italian and English.So I sat down and plunked out “Singin' in the Rain.” My wife, as stunned by my performance as I was, provided the one clap of applause.And I thought, “I can play… I made music!”I could have been eight years old and had just run through Bach’s Goldberg Variations to resounding cheers by a sold-out Carnegie Hall.I was at long last and a little late — and a little immature, a little weak — a musician!Let me add that taking up the “pen” has proven as gratifying, though not quite the special pleasure of learning something entirely new, entirely beyond all my previous endeavors. I believe, too, that grappling with the piano has sharpened the point on my pen. Learning to play the piano and putting musical notation and music theory into my brain has stirred up the language centers. Music has invaded and richly enhanced my writing. It’s one of those gifts, bought with the price of time and commitment, that keeps on giving.