Do you have someone with whom you can be absolutely honest?  Someone whom you can show your true self?  A family member, a lover, a friend… or even something inanimate, like an instrument?  Many people have this advantage and blessing, but there are people out there that lack all this fortune. I’m lucky to have both family and friends.  But I also have the piano, and I’ve got to admit, the piano helps me the most out of everything.  It wasn’t always easy with the piano, as with everything else, but I managed to overcome one of the highest turning points, which obviously changed my life since then.

When I was younger, perhaps around the ages six to eleven, piano was the one thing I despised, along with swimming.  I mean, I still despise swimming, but that’s different because I’ll never learn how to love swimming.  I dreaded the suspension that lead up to the moment where I had to play the piano.  It was probably the one time during the day that just destroyed it.  Piano destroyed my Saturdays, in particular.  I have piano lessons once a week on Saturdays.  Now I have a 50 minute lesson,  but when I was younger, I only had 30 minutes.  My sisters and I would play at Mrs. Jennifer's house, our teacher, and she would give us pointers and what we can do to improve one thing and keep doing something else.  She’d also assign us new music we’d have to practice in a week’s time. 

Thanks to her, I learned that I hate the slow, complicated, hand-tangling songs, such as Debussy and Bach.  I also learned that I love the fast, emotional ones, such as Mendelssohn.  Mozart, along with Beethoven, are the kind of guys who are really strict with their notes and beats.  They’re not very carefree like a ballerina, but more like a marching band.  I’m not saying that a ballerina can’t dance to their music.  Actually, I don’t believe I ever even saw anyone dance to a classical; that’s probably just because I’m not interested in dancing.  Anyways, Mozart is softer than Beethoven, so Mozart is closer to my liking than Beethoven.  Mendelssohn is faster and has a lot of sixteenth notes in the music, but you can slow down and speed up whenever you want.  You can also pound the keyboards, making it sound like an elephant was walking on the piano and five seconds later be as quiet as a mouse.  But he’s not as free as Chopin.  He is known as the “Poet of the piano.”  After all, when you hear someone play him, it sounds like a poem.  All tangled up with notes and rhythms you don’t understand, but once you untangle the ropes, you slowly understand the meaning behind his music.  His music is really powerful and passionate.  All you have to do is grab a bowl of ice cream, sit down on your couch, turn on your TV and put the volume low, put on a drama, grab your speaker, and play some Chopin.  I don’t know about you, but secretly, I’m an oversize baby that cries when watching both dramatic movies and other people crying… I swear, crying is just as contagious as yawning.

 Mrs. Jennifer announced one day that we had a concert coming up.  I was currently playing two jazz pieces, so my new assignment was to memorize them.  I’ve got to say, out of every step you have to take to learn a piece, memorizing is the worst out of all.  There are sections that I know really well, so there’s no problem in memorizing those.  But, there are places that I don’t know quite that well, causing me to sit at the piano, playing the same section over and over and over until I feel like my fingers will just break off.  The concert was about to come up, and I still didn’t have my pieces fully memorized.  However, as everyone knows, time doesn’t wait for you, so if you’re behind, you’ve got to pick it up.  That’s exactly what I did, and it really paid off in the end.  The concert finally came up, I had my pieces memorized, yet I still did not feel ready.  I did have my pieces memorized and such, but I believe that no one is ever ready.  They may have the confidence to do something well, but to be ready is imaginary, in my opinion.  I was placed to play second to last.  My oldest sister, Irene, was going to play after me, putting her last.  To be 100% honest, I was sweating like a pig, which isn’t that pleasant to imagine.  Everyone else was playing so beautifully, so it obviously intimidated me.  I was going to look like a five-year-old’s drawing next to “The Kiss” by Picasso.  But, alas, it was my turn to play. 

You know that feeling you get when you are taking a Biology test that you absolutely forgot to study for and you get to a question where you don’t even understand half of the words mentioned?  I feel like everyone has experienced this at some point, and it’s a really unpleasant feeling.  That was me at the concert.  My brain felt like it was going to tear apart, but at the same time, it felt like it was shrinking to the point that it would disappear.  That’s bad, because either way, with a brain split in two or no brain at all, you can’t play your piece, let alone live.  I don’t know how I survived, or how I even got to the piano without falling on my face, but the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the stool, my fingers ready in pace.  At that point, I completely blacked out.  This always happens to me when I’m put under the spotlight.  I can’t really explain how I felt in that moment, because to be honest, I didn’t feel anything at all.  I did take a deep breath, which helped a ton!  I could just feel all the stress being released along with the CO₂.  That’s when my hands started playing instantly, before I even got comfortable.  It was like an imaginary puppeteer was pulling on my strings, and I had no control of my hands.  I did make a few mistakes, but technically, I had no control over myself, so the fault lies on the invisible source controlling me, as bizarre as that sounds.  Most people in this part would be describing their feelings and how they poured their whole heart into the piece, but that wasn’t me.  I did add dynamics to the pieces, but I didn’t feel that liberty of manipulating and changing the song to my own satisfaction.  That’s why it felt like I wasn’t playing the piano, because in that moment, it didn’t sound like me.  I guess you could say that I was disappointed in myself for not achieving my highest potential.  But it was all over just like that, and I remember this wave of relief just hitting me.  I quickly did a small bow and then scurried to my seat, ending my performance for sure.

Piano is a something that I am so lucky and fortunate to have and to be able to use.  Piano doesn’t just benefit you academically, but also mentally.  I read in a few articles on the web that people who play an instrument actually have it easier in math, memorizing and finding any patterns.  I never feel ready for anything, and when put under the spotlight, it makes it all worse.  There are two types of people who are put under pressure, the type who does well and brushes it off as if it’s nothing and me, the type who procrastinates over it and just wants to bail out of everything.  Most of the time, you’d see me completely just trip over myself as I try to perform my best, but this incident was different.  It wasn’t me that was playing.  I don’t know how to explain it, but the feeling, if there was any, and the manner I played,  was similar to something else.  I was the sweating pig, and the demolished brain.  What I wasn’t were the hands and the rush of feelings.  
           I guess I learned a lot from this invisible source.  I learned that the piano isn’t something I should take for granted.  Yes, there’ll be times I’ll mess up and get frustrated and just become a boiling pot of water, but as long as I get over it and achieve my goals, it’ll all be worth it.

-Agata Montanini