OK, so I went through a phase in my earlier years when I wanted to become a pianist/artist. I even spent some time studying at the MSM (Manhattan School of Music), but this was YEARS ago and all of the more difficult pieces have left my memory and my fingers are no longer agile enough to even play them. I hadn't played piano in over 4 years and here I was being asked if I could play. Play I did. Despite the 4 or so years that I hadn't touched a piano key, the 10 or so years that I did play helped me muster up one song. The only piece that came into mind was a piece by Yann Tiersen (the French composer/musician who has composed music for such feature films as Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain and Good Bye Lenin!).
Nearly a year later, my neighbor was divorced (they apparently got divorced sometime at the end of last year while I was in Mali) and since he's moving out by the end of the month, he offered to give me a piano that he has. His ex-wife had never learned it and he didn't want to take it with him. So voilà. I now have a piano. I'm kind of nervous to start playing again. I think instruments are like languages. You play it for a long time, you study it, you practice it... but if you stop for even a year or two, you lose your ability. You have to re-train yourself slowly to get to the level you were once before. I read in a language psychology book that if you learn a language after your critical period (after around the age of 10), even if you study it and master it, if you don't speak it or use it at all for about 2 or 3 years, you will lose your ability to speak it. Doesn't that suck?
Today's Random Video:
Please don't be offended! It's just a joke and besides, I fell for it the first time I saw it ;)
