12.12.2002 | 12:51 p.m.
I was brought to my senses.......

Last night, Jenny and Daisy decided they wanted to sing Christmas carols. So we went to the Theatre, and I started to sing "Long time ago in Bethlehem so the Holy Bible says..."

Jenny had no idea which carol it was. "Wow you know more than *I* do and you've never even celebrated it!" I explained to her that the reason I knew all of them was because I used to play them all on the piano and the songbooks had all the words. Both of them said "You play? Why dont I know this?" I realised that pretty much no one except the friends I grew up with know I used to play the piano.

I played for 11 years. Yep, that long. From when I was 5 to when I was 16. Why I quit is another diary entry all together, so for now I won't get into it. I used to be really really really good. I used to take lessons through Trinity College of Music, London. My teacher was qualified by them and so I had to take their exams. They had examiners fly down from London, and it was a huge deal. All year was spent polishing the three pieces we had to play. Plus we had ear tests, sight reading, scales,arpeggios - the typical stuff. My favourite were the ear tests. I loved those.

My biggest regret, and I do mean biggest regret is giving up and never touching a piano since I was 16. And then something inside me yesterday just made me miss it so much. I missed it before too, but I was so convinced that I'd never be able to play again that I just never tried. I knew I could still read music (oh the beauty of mneumonics) - and I'd spent a lot of time transposing music for my teacher. I used to be able to do that in different keys but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to do that now. I can still transpose from one octave to another, but uh, anyone with any kind of musical theoretical knowledge can. So last night, I sat down and kinda stared at the piano for awhile. I just played middle C a lot of times. Then I played all my major scales, all of which amazingly enough I remembered, (G major: F#. F Major: Bb....heh) even though I had to do both hands separately AND THEN! I just started playing this piece I used to play....and I REMEMBERED ALL OF IT! Without the sheet music or anything! It's so strange that I haven't played it in over three years but once I played the right keys, everything else just kinda....followed. Like my fingers were moving automatically. It sounded like crap at first, but then it just smoothed itself out. And so I played a few other pieces I used to know by heart. Once I got the first few notes, the rest just came back to me. It's SO AMAZING to me. The human brain is just truly amazing.

There was some sheet music above the piano and I tried playing some of that, and failed miserably. It was pretty complicated to be fair. So I played some of the treble clef. It took some time, though, because even though I can still read music, it took me some time to get my brain back into that mode where I could compute the information. Kinda like..."Oh well...that's A...and A on the piano is...uh...there. Pause. Hold for twice the counts. 2/4 in quavers. One and two and one and two and.....wait, but...ohhh...it's a rest!" But I did it! If it took me barely a few minutes to get into the basic groove - albeit terribly dissonantly - I can get back to it.

I'm SO DETERMINED to play again like I used to. So I went home and drew staffs, with a ruler and everything. Wrote down all the notes and kinda stared at them to familarise myself with them again to get back into the mode where I can read a note and think "Yup,G" and play it immediately, instead of thinking..."Uh..second line, treble clef....uhh....G?" and then hover my finger around until I find it. And I'm going to practice everyday, even it's just fooling around. When I go home, I'm going to pull out all my theory books and try and reacquaint myself with that too. And you know what...? I think I can actually do this.

deja vu? | jamais vu?