I'm in a room. There's a door in front of me. On the other side of that door is a whole world of adventure and imagination and joy and delight, but for the moment, I'm locked in this gray little room. The door itself has a lock that is all rusted. I've tried to open it in the past, but I've never gotten very far. Sometimes I try to scrape the rust off the lock. I also have a rusty old key that I occasionally try to polish. Each time, after I've made a little progress, I'll put it into the keyhole in hopes of opening the door. It turns a half a millimeter or so, but the brief excitement at my progress dies quickly when I realize, once again, it's not going to open the lock.
I set the old key aside, and from there I can forget about the door, the lock, and the world outside, for months—years, even. But then something happens—I hear birdsong, or I catch a glimpse of color—and I pick up the key and start picking away at the stubborn rust.
That dark little room is my piano life, specifically my jazz/blues piano life. The world outside is what I imagine my piano life would be ... if I could just get through that door! That magical world is one where I can effortlessly improvise, where I can play for an audience, where I am equally comfortable playing from a lead sheet as I am composing my own music, where people laugh or dance or grow melancholy in response to what I'm playing. It's a world where I feel complete and utter freedom and joy at the keyboard, and what I create there communicates that complete and utter freedom and joy.
Scraping the rust off the key? Those have been my feeble past efforts to get there. It started when I was a child, learning the blues scale ... but I went no further. My freshman year of college at Tulane, I would hit jazz clubs and longingly watch the pianists for hours ... but I never had the courage to talk to them, to learn from them. I went to Jazz Fest every year for years, sitting as close to the piano as I could, watching, trying to learn. And I would go home and sit at my keyboard ... and not be able to play anything like what I'd just seen.
In my twenties, I bought Mark Levine's book on jazz theory. I got a few chapters in and learned the ii-V-I progression in all keys, in both intervals ... but then I got stuck, and I went no further. I occasionally came back to that book, but I never persisted with it. At one point in my late twenties, I briefly took jazz piano lessons ... but I wasn't able to play "Maple Leaf Rag" with a swing rhythm as assigned, so I lost heart and gave up.
If you're reading this, you may be thinking, "She hardly deserves to be able to turn that key and get to that world outside!" And you'd be right. When it comes to learning to play jazz or blues, I tend to give up before I even try. Why?
I think part of me feels like I shouldn't be able to play any of it. I'm a cerebral middle-class white girl. I am not a cool cat. And while I have strong emotions, I've hardly had a hard life. So maybe I don't have the soul for jazz or blues. Maybe I haven't suffered enough. Did I mention I'm not cool enough, that I'm too nerdy? Really, maybe I don't deserve to be able to play in these styles. Maybe I should just stick with classical and "easy listening" -style piano to reflect my middle-class vanilla upbringing.
I don't put much stock into anything I just wrote above, but I do think it's those kinds of thoughts that have caused me to give up in the past and set the rusty old key aside.
Well, I'm 53 years old now, and I'm not getting any younger. But there's good news in that: I recently noticed that I've worked away some of the rust on that old key over the years without realizing it. I've developed "chops," as they say – i.e., I'm a pretty good pianist. I have a decent understanding of music theory and a fairly good playing technique, and I’m very comfortable at the keyboard. Piano feels like home.
I've also suffered in a way I hadn't when I was in my teens and twenties. Life has happened, and it hasn't been all good.
And so, again, I pick up the rusty key … and I’m pleasantly surprised to see a few slivers of shine to it.
Will this time be different? I think so. I no longer give a shit about whether or not I have the coolness or the "soul" to play what I want to play. I don't care that I'm a middle-aged white lady that most people would probably think of as a "Karen." I don't care about any of that anymore. I just want to make music.
And that's what I'm going to do. The door may open, or it may not ... but at least I'm going to keep working at it. And who knows, maybe I'll end up busting that stupid door down. Whatever it takes ... one day, I'm going to make it out of this drab little room to that sweet, colorful world outside.
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