1,000 Days of Piano - Day 1

I just spent an hour plowing through select pieces from the Suzuki piano repertoire. If I’m going to learn how to teach the music, first I must learn the music itself. I didn’t play much that was familiar to me from my childhood of taking piano lessons. It was lots of reading—slow reading. I felt as though I was at a buffet full of very rich food, and all I could do was nibble.
I ended up with more Bartok than I’m accustomed to playing, using my piano as a portal to Hungary and Romania.

It’s more than a musical journey through time and place. In the end, on this first day, it will have taken me nearly two hours to practice and post a video of my playing. I could more easily race across a zip line. And I’m supposed to do this daily for a thousand days? It will be a giant exercise in non-judgment.

Starting Over

Starting over is a siren song that calls us to our better selves. We get makeovers because—starting from today—we want to look better, more fashionable, taller, thinner, younger. We make New Year’s resolutions and Lenten resolutions hoping finally to get into better shape, get more organized, get more fiscally responsible. Underneath all this virtue and self-improvement, however, lurks the old self, the short, dumpy, dowdy, disorganized self we think needs so much improvement.
I’m slowly realizing that starting over doesn’t have to carry so much expectation. I may be starting over, but I’m still me. Whether I appear to myself to be capable and confident or frazzled and frumpy has everything to do with the lenses I’m looking through and the mirrors I’m choosing to reflect what I see and nothing to do with who I really am.
So I’m starting over with this blog. I’m keeping the sporadic, eclectic posts I’ve published over the years. Perhaps I lacked the discipline and focus required to maintain a readable, magnetic narrative. Maybe I still do. I’m starting over anyway. I’m unable to resist the lure of new beginnings.