A note about notes

I just did something possibly silly but also joyful: bought a cheapie electric piano on TradeMe. I'd promised myself I'd have my house fully unpacked and clean and pristine first - then I broke my own promise.

I taught myself to play piano as a wee kid, at my Nana's house in Invercargill, as soon as recorder lessons showed me how to read music. I had to make do with her sheet music collection, which meant the funkiest shit on offer was Richard Clayderman. Or I'd play stuff from the radio, by ear, simplified.

I wasn't very good - I had the mental dexterity, but my fingers wouldn't quite match it. Still, I look back at how frickin determined I was. I persisted and persisted until my hands hurt and my brain gave up.

I carried that persistence through. As a student in a Dunedin flat, I was given a piano by a flatmate's boyfriend's grandparents. It traveled with me, flat to mouldy flat, until I got sick of moving it and it was so out of tune it assaulted my ears.

I played the Moonlight Sonata and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor, both photocopied in the Dunedin Public Library. I don't know what kind of son of a bitch writes in C sharp minor, and maybe the effort to learn that would have been better spent on my grades - but, whatever. I remember the opening bars with more passion than any lacklustre essay I ever wrote. I remember how, when I felt like I came up short academically, when that stuff seemed like a language I couldn't speak, the notes on the page were unambiguous, never tried to mess with me.

Music can be about judgement and elitism. But it can also be about self-acceptance, and pleasure, and the art of not giving a fuck. I will play my new piano in my new house. I will sing over top. With my house adjoined by two others, and so fully soundproofed, no one will hear. But in its sparseness, its lack of curtains and carpet and baggage, the acoustic will be perfect for the notes I play.

My fingers will be slow, my brain will if I'm lucky be dexterous, but my wairua will soar.

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