I Am Here

I asked my parents if I could play the piano when I was seven years old. No one in my family played and I had never really been around music or instruments extensively but, for some reason I asked. One of the greatest gifts my parents gave me was saying yes to my eager, inspired little eyes. Mr. Mogab, my next door neighbor at the time, was getting a new piano and he was generous enough to give the seven year old girl living next-door his old piano. I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I couldn't keep my hands off of it. The pedals fascinated me, and I became increasingly entranced by the different sounds that I could pull out of the instrument. Through a move across the country, building relationships, watching some of them fall, a couple different schools and a lot of years, that piano is still sitting across from my bed in my room. 

 

Some notes don't work anymore because it took one too many angry emotional playing sessions. The bench is a little too wobbly to play on from the wear of many improv duets and exploration with friends.  It can't project like it used to and it isn't conducive to a lot of the repertoire I am taking on these days, but I will never not have that piano across from my bed. That piano defines me. It is a part of my being. Through all of the "stuff" that we all go through, that piano was always there for me to vent into. The way that I feel when I am encompassed in sound, when I am able to create art by manipulating sound, emotion, time, there is absolutely nothing like it. To have a way to work through my feelings, thoughts, and contemplations in a tangible way has allowed for an understanding of myself, beauty, and art in a way that I know I am lucky to have.  

 

I am a music major because I love the feeling of creating something that will only be in that moment. After the last note the music is gone and all that is left is the way that you and your audience experienced the moment that you created, but I have no idea where that will go, or how music will look as a part of my life five or ten years down the road. Whatever I do I will continue to create. I love what I am learning, the people that are in my field, and the relationships I have gained through my musical studies, and I plan on continuing to enjoy that for however long joy comes from it. I'm not so concerned with what will happen later, and maybe that's inspired or maybe it's stupid, but I'm gonna go with it. My passions reach far from music and may take me places I wouldn't have dreamed they would, but today I'm concerned with being here, in the moment that I am creating, the sounds that I make, and the experience that I create for other people. I'll look to the next performance when it comes.

 

bisous,

SK