That’s all, papa

Every second of every day, it was there. In the space between conversations, in the back of my mind. The notes and rhythms. The dynamics, the key signature, the score. I would sit at my desk and school and tap, tap, tap, the long-embedded songs in my head. I woke up to the enticing voice of my alarm and breezed downstairs to the soft humming of my mother while she made breakfast. I got in my car and listened to the all-too-similar beat of the pop songs on the radio, and walked into school with my earbuds in. I greeted my friends, I went to class, I ate lunch, I went home, never without the comforting noise in my ears. If only for the routine, the repetition. I suppose I felt obligated to listen to music constantly since it was all I knew. It was what I came from. When I did get home, one sunny Monday afternoon, I drop my backpack and sit on the couch for a moment of peace.

My father sits near me and says, “Darling, play a song for me.” I groan. He does this every day. Every day, without fail. I always comply, because if I don’t he will pester me beyond imagining.

“Why, papa?” I ask. I do this every day. Every day, without fail.

He replies with a relaxed smile. “Because I love to hear you play.” And that is the answer he gives me, every day, without fail.

Fine. I get up from the oh-so-comfortable cushions and trudge over to the hard, unrelenting bench of our piano. Memories flash through my mind, as they do every day. Me, 10 years old, sitting on my mother’s lap while she guides my hands to the keys to play “Mary had a little lamb.” My sister, 16, a beautiful girl playing a beautiful melody to entertain our dinner guests. My brother, 11, refusing to sit and play because he would rather play the guitar instead. My father, my idol, the greatest pianist to ever grace the earth with his beautiful long fingers sailing over the keys. I think about these things, these beautiful memories, and place my fingers on the keys. The smooth, white, ivory keys, that are cool and sure under my hands. I think about everything and nothing, as I’ve been instructed by so many to, and my hands slowly lift from the keys.

They lower, quickly, without warning, without any indication of what I may play. It is a mystery. A thrilling, breathtaking mystery that I solve just as I begin.

My fingers slam on the keys. I can play beautifully, wonderfully, just like my mother and my father and my sister. But I don’t. I play ugly, disgusting sounds, where the sharps connect with the flats and the high notes sound so, so wrong when in tandem with the low ones. I look over to see my father, grimacing, as he should, listening to this blunt disgrace of everything we are, but as I meet his eyes he schools his features into cool indifference.

“Is that all, my dear?”

I keep my eyes on his as I continue playing my wickedly vile tune for five seconds, ten, eleven, twelve... and stop. For one second, one moment of reprieve, and then I look at my fingers and start anew. A lovely song, this time. One that could bring tears to the eyes of the fiercest, deadliest warriors and that could stop the hearts of fools. The notes float through the air, so gracefully, so magnificently, and I play and I play and I play. Notes and rhythms, melodies and harmonies and echoes. It had always been just notes, and rhythms, and melodies and harmonies and echoes. My father, my mother, my sister, could make music as if it were not their fingers on the keys, but their hearts. I never had that. Music, the background noise of my life, had been everywhere, all the time. I listened to music, and I enjoyed it, but- I never felt a true connection to it. I played and I played and I played and nothing. Until now. 

Until the world becomes clearer as if I had just put on the most well-made glasses in the world. The notes, the rhythms, the melodies and harmonies, and echoes, turn into more. They turn into life and death and heaven and hell and ideas and dreams and everything in the entire universe is suddenly encompassed by one magnificent instrument and me. The whole world disappears and it’s just me and the piano. My piano. Because I had not sat at this wretched bench for hours, had not cried over failed practices, had not slammed the keys in frustration so many times for this instrument to belong to anybody but me. Suddenly, it was clear. My family, their legacy, it was nothing compared to the one I would build for myself. I had been taught and trained and told that music was everything. From the day I was born, music was everywhere. It had never meant this much to me, never had the effect it was supposed to. Dinner guests would listen to my sister play and they would weep, while I simply sat in the corner and waited for her to finish. Music was everything, they said. It was nature and religion and humans and destiny. I never understood. But as I played, on this ordinary Monday afternoon, the flowers stopped growing and the gods held their breath. The emotion, the pure and innate feeling that I manifested shattered souls and stitched them back together, slowly, perfectly, wonderfully. I had grown up here, in this incredible place between nature and religion and humans and destiny. I had grown up here, and I never realized how music- simple, elegant, wonderful, music- could change lives and slow time and resurrect the dead and align the stars. And it had.

I could have kept playing for hours. Days. Lifetimes. I would give anything to feel what I did then, that breaking of my soul in the best possible way. But, I reached the end of the score and I felt the music, the sadness, the triumph, the everything and nothing that I was supposed to.

I leaned back on the hard, unrelenting, bench, suddenly the most comfortable place I would ever be. My head turned, once again, not to meet the pained eyes of my disappointed father, but the shining, weeping eyes of a proud one. I gave him a slight smile.

“That’s all, papa.”