music

so i was at a seder against my will the other night, and it was admittedly not as bad as i thought. i hadn't seen these ppl in literally 10 years, and i never looked forward to seeing them in the past. anyway, food was pretty good, the adults were reli nice if a tad loud, but 2 of the girls were boy obsessed and sounded kinda slutty from how they were telling stories. the girl who's house it was was fine though. sweet, courteous, a friends fan.

but eventually i got sick of the boy talk and went out to the adults to play some piano. and it saved me from awkwardness the rest of the night. i played wat i've been working on of clair de lune, and i worked my way through moonlight sonata for the first time in weeks. then i played the song i wrote, and some oldies and newies that i'd picked out by ear before.

but to the point of the post, i know i can do quite a few things decently, dance, sing, write poetry, but music's by far the thing i'm most confident about. i'm always second guessing myself at my dancing and singing ability, and i feel like i'm missing something in my poetry, but music is something i KNOW i'm beast at. i get writer's block at times, i can never think of original movements to do in dance, and even the stuff i'm taught i feel like i look awkward doing half the time, and i feel like my voice is good for certain songs, but at the end of the day, i know i can sit down at the piano and go up and down those keys with total comfort.

for the moves i can't do, the ideas i can't convey in words, and the notes i can't hit with my voice, piano is something that never fully limits me. just as all 88 keys are laid out before me, so are the infinite possibilities of melodies and harmonies. when i write a poem, i like for it to have some meaning or point, and i often have trouble sticking to that point or even finding it, but with piano, it's all self-explanatory. the music flows through me and is colored by my mood. no language but the notes themselves, no prose but the rhythm and tempo i choose, no rhyme but the harmonies coming from the instrument.

for some reason, it comes easier for me to be original in music than anything else. i don't necesasrily have to have a subject in mind when i play, i don't need a plan or a structure. i can just start somewhere and see where my ear takes me, i can travel to different octaves and repeat as i see fit, fiddle with rhythm and key independently and together to emphasize. i know poetry, dance, and singing have multiple dimensions like music, but with the piano, it's like i know every interval, every touch, every tone, and i have control over every one, every dimension ready to bend at my command. but it's not even a power thing, it's like symbiosis. the music uses me to escape the instrument and resonate, and i use the music like meditation, calming, pensive, renewing.