Often, I’ll check my email and see familiar notes from the building group mailing list on Yahoo: "the person above plays loud music every night after 11. We've gone through everything; complaints to management are useless, what we do at this?" or "loud noises come from the neighbors' at 2 am, so incencscentive! -Wei” [sic]
Point taken, I thought: neighbors sensitive to sound, hail from all parts of the globe, and can’t spell. I have been warned.
So, when I got my piano in early December, I was nervous that the neighbors would complain immediately. I made a rule for myself to follow: no piano before 8 am or after 10:00 p.m. on weekdays, possibly 10:30 or 11 on Fridays and Saturdays; and play quietly – gently, dahhling, gently. Since my normal piano-playing "inspiration" fell in the late afternoon or early evening naturally, the first part of the rule turned out to be fairly easy to follow.
The "play quietly" aspect, however, quickly fell from the radar. Given that I'm no longer "good" at piano, and haven't had a lesson or learned new music in years, I (loudly) play the few things that I know (and even more loudly, the many things I do not know). Since there's nobody around to criticize my musical choices, the piano resounds with drama from early 20th century Russia and 1950s USSR, simplified and, sometimes, supplemented by an iPod. Or, more often, it’s suplemented by YouTube videos of other, likeminded and nameless souls from the Internet. They post things like “this music touched me, I am crying” and “thank you for uploading that!” instead of “what kind of bizarre shit are you listening to in twenty-first century America?”
Somehow, the piano and the iPod are the only things today that connect me to Russia. (Rather, they are the only things that connect me to what I once thought Russia was.)
My last piano lesson occurred when I was maybe 17 or so. I gave it up to star in my last high school musical.
So, I would think that it’s GREAT that piano has become a habit again. Except it’s a habit without any progress at all.
Weekday evenings in winter are like this: around 6:15 p.m., I come home from work, change into my house clothes, and throw leftovers together in the kitchen. I eat a quick dinner in the living room in front of "What Not to Wear" (6-7 pm on TLC) and "Two and a Half Men" (7-7:30 on the CW). Around 7:45 the TV is off, most of the lights are off—except for the two lamps near the piano—and the weirdness begins.
I say "weirdness" because the reaction of most people who visit my home—"aw, you play the piano! Play something you usually play!"—fills me with embarrassment. I'll only play for a certain, very select group of people that I know (really know) won't balk at the ridiculousness of my repertoire. (Or worse: judge me, erroneously, to be a hopeless romantic.) That group of people is getting smaller and smaller every day.
Oh, but I don’t just play. Now that I live alone, I sing too, accompany myself. It’s harder than it looks.
First I perform the couple of songs that I know well. The songs are Russian, old fashioned, usually about something like unrequited love or nostalgia for something that was never to be, set to 19th century poetry. Then I'll do a half-hearted attempt at reading the new scores of a song that I might have printed the night before, arrangements easier than stuff I used to play in middle school. But when my sight-reading attempt is not satisfactory, I go back to a staple piece.
I might get frustrated at my lack of progress, slam the keys, close my eyes for a moment, clam my fists in and out. I might remember what it was like to be 15 and play Mozart effortlessly; I’d remind myself how much I suck for stopping the lessons and how I regret it now. I’m no pianist, no matter what I’d like to portray to people. I’m no musician; I have no self-control, no discipline, and no ability to learn something new on my own like real musicians do.
To recover, I'll play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata – my favorite piece of music of all time, and the only classical piece I can still play somewhat flawlessly. But many people can play classical music well, and the first movement may sound great—but I can’t play the second, and even worse—I can’t play the third, which is the hardest and the most passionate, and impressive and least understood.
I wonder why I can't bring myself to play and sing something cooler that I also like—like bossa nova or samba or jazz. It’s not just a lack of skill—that could be salvaged with a good teacher or some patience, but I never call a teacher. No. I can only play songs that nobody listens to anymore, except my grandmother. Songs that, in my own opinion, belong in timeless recordings and are not subject to good reinterpretation anymore. Songs that, unfortunately, nobody understands unless they are Russian; and these songs that make it harder, much harder, to get away from being Russian. That’s because they're weighty and although I don't "get" many things, I seem to "get" them—or they "get" me. It’s just that other people don’t “get” why I can’t get over them.
So anyway, when I got my piano, I was nervous about the neighbors—even though two out of three apartments near mine are inhabited by Russians. Even Russians are not like this.
About a week ago I ran into one of the Russian neighbors in the elevator. She is an Armenian woman in her 60s, plump, suspiciously polite, with a topknot of hair the color of dark cherry wood. Whenever I see her she coolly greets me in the hallway and makes necessary, if awkward, conversation about nothing.
That day I was coming home from work. I'd had a bad day. She had been taking out her trash and we were both in the elevator.
I started, never knowing what to talk about with my neighbors. "I hope my piano is not bothering you," I said. "I got a piano some time ago and I've been playing it.” Silence. Awkward laugh. I smile. “I haven't heard any complaints yet.”
She looked at me. I wasn't sure what to make of it.
"I guess you can't hear it," I added quickly, and pressed the button to go to our floor.
The neighbor looked at me again, this time from underneath her rimless glasses.
“I can hear it every night,” she said. “The walls are thin.”
“Oh,” I began. “I'm sorry. Please, feel free to knock if it's too loud—"
“What do you mean,” she interrupted. Then she smiled. Half way, she smiled a stern, Russian, distrustful smile. But then: “It's the only joy that I have,” she said sadly.
“I used to play, too," she said. "But I've got only a keyboard now. Every evening, when you play and sing, I listen.”
I didn’t want a fan and I felt sorry about my playing, yet sorrier, suddenly, about her life. I wished that she'd told me, "Well, the spirit is there. But of course, you could use some tutorials in scales, or the piece you played yesterday, the chords were wrong." Any Russian who plays the piano would know that and tell me.
She didn't. She was probably thinking it.
I was embarrassed: the neighbors can hear my arias, and they hear the same ones often. They hear my frustration with things that I can’t control, and they hear that I take it out on the music.
That evening, she slipped a business card under my door. It was the name and number of her Armenian friend, who loves in Watertown. “I highly recommend her,” was written on the back of the card in formal, awkward English, betrayed by very Russian handwriting. I kept the card.
I still haven't called, even though I've been asking friends for piano teacher referrals for six months now. “I want someone who could teach me jazz,” I told my friends. “I don’t want to only play classical or Russian anymore.” Thinking: I wouldn't have much to play for a new teacher; I can't afford piano lessons, I can barely afford my condo fee; someone who's been "playing piano for 16 years" should have more to show for herself than some Beethoven and badly arranged Russian standards. But then, I think again, enough.
Today I came home from work. I played the same song as yesterday. Today it touched me more than yesterday. Today, I think I miss yesterday.
One of these days I might make the call. Or not.
