As I explained, since I can remember I had a special connection with the music. Music was everything to me my life, my feelings... my escapism of my real life in the real world to a different place where all the good things lived, where all the dreams and hopes materialized, a place where the purity of oneself's emotions joined in harmony... a place where the meaning of suffering did not exist because feelings like pain, fear or hate were completely unknown. The nearest place to what we know as heaven or as Platon described it the world of the souls.
Back in the day, when there was no internet or only few people could afford it exploring new music was a challenge itself. You had very few sources like the radio or the library or else, if you could afford it again, the Opera or the Concert Hall. I was always borrowing music off the library, but for one reason or the other never discovered the piano solos and the selection of contemporary classical music or soundtracks was very limited.
It was when I moved to a new house that I discovered this music. I was 12 and my neighbor downstairs played piano. Rebecca was 14 and had a piano that was inherited from her granny, she used to play one or two hours every second day and her favorite song was this one I'm posting. I discovered a new world, a different concept of music that awoke feelings in me that were new for me.
These feelings weren't related to anything; this music didn't remind me of any experience, thought or sensation... it was the music and me bounded directly. Shivers ran through my body and all of a sudden all the feelings I had ever felt magnified and increased in intensity. I could smile without a reason or shed tears admired by the beauty of a song, it's when the notes transported me to this magical place.
The hunger in me was growing every passing day, the more I discovered the further I wanted to go. After class I used to go to this shop and look at the pianos that were exposed, I could spend there hours losing the sense of time.
No other instrument fascinated me in the way the piano did, no other instrument made me feel in the same way.
Two years later, when I passed my junior cert my parents decided to reward me with a keyboard. I could say that until now it has been the happiest day of my life.
I started playing without taking any lessons, everyday even if it was late at night (or let's say very early in the morning) and I used to play for hours. I put challenges to myself like playing certain amount of songs without failing, if I failed in one note I was starting again.
For those who don't know me, I was born with a malformation in my wrists but it only developed in one of them. I was in my growing period so the doctors didn't know how it would develop and if they had to operate me. This bone disease is a very rare form of malformation and if surgery is needed, the patient needs to spend 4 months with a plaster and after that you need to learn all the movements and exercises like writing. This is because they alter your nerves and the cells lose their memory.
They did not know whether to exercise was a good thing or a bad thing, there was so little reference or study linked to it; I put my bet and kept playing. There were days that it was ok, but some other days would hurt me and I kept playing until I could not bear the pain.
The pain eventually disappeared when I stop growing. I was giving the chance to go to college or start a music school. In my fear to fail and not being good enough I chose college, then I left the piano behind; it was like I felt I cheated on it...I played it here and there after that, but there is not a single day that I do not wish to start playing again in the way I did.
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