We've always had quite an intense, turbulent relationship. I started playing the piano at the age of four, going on to complete a professional diploma in performance before I'd started university as well as Grade 8 in flute within four years of taking it up, and then earning Grade 8 singing within two years of taking proper lessons. I even ended up learning and taking a performance exam for the mbira at university. By the end of my musical education, I could play:
-Piano
-Flute
-Voice
-Guitar
-Lever harp
-Mbira
-Djembe
-Marimba
-Recorder/ tin whistle (beyond primary school level, that is)
I'd performed on each of these either as a solo or as part of a group at various and endless concerts and shows, and although the relationship was time-consuming and stressful (as many long-term relationships with anything can be), I thought the love would last forever.
Until the end of university, when I burned out.
The first sign was when my new piano tutor at university began to put pressure on me to work towards a second diploma. The way the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music works is this: you have Grades 1-8 (which everyone knows about), but afterwards there are three further levels of professional qualification: Diploma, Licentiate and Fellowship. It's not particularly for someone as young as I was to reach the diploma stage. So of course when I began my music course at university, my new tutor was eager to push me even further.
The problem was, though, that I was just so very tired of relentless examination. Playing the piano had always been a source of joy and escape for me at school, even at times of high pressure. At university, despite being used to pressure, it just stopped being fun. It started to just be all about Impressing People. Even worse, my new tutor was slightly dismissive rather than encouraging, telling me 'You won't be able to play that', or 'Oh, but everyone knows how to play that' (the latter after I learned a certainly-not-easy piece completely by heart in a week). I stopped feeling like the piano was my instrument, and started feeling like a delusional child.
I made the decision, much to my tutor's disgruntlement, not to continue to Licentiate level, and to focus on other areas of music.
The course I enrolled on was very 21st century music-orientated, which at first I thought would be interesting, but I very rapidly learned just wasn't my cup of tea. Having to write experimental abstract music felt like Monet might feel if someone dragged him to the Tate Modern and told him to be more like the artists there.
I clung to every unexamined performance, savouring every gig with my medieval band, taking in every moment with my African drumming group, revelling in every rebellious piece of music I played on the piano that wasn't what I was due to play in the next exam. Slowly, though, people in the groups I was in drifted away either graduating before me and moving elsewhere in the country or losing interest in playing themselves. The day the music proverbially died for me, though, was the day I handed in my last ethnomusicology assignment in my final year.
I loved ethnomusicology. I swear I was a stone's throw away from dreading my hair, wearing tie-dye and travelling the world in the name of music because of ethnomusicology (only I've always been too disgustingly middle class for that to ever happen. Although isn't travelling the world to spiritually find yourself a middle class thing?) Anyway, when it ended, so did my enthusiasm for music. All music thereafter was purely academic, and since music had always formerly been connected to my emotions, I became detached from it. After graduation the piano lid closed, the flute remained in pieces and my voice went back into hiding. My loving eighteen-year relationship with music had died.
Mourning was difficult. Everyone who had known me as an accomplished musician kept reminding me of that amazing concerto I performed in, or that time I sang a solo part for BBC youth choir of the year, or that gig where I only had a few days to learn twenty popular songs on the piano by heart, etc. etc. etc.
It felt a bit like the heartbreak of splitting up with your partner, but with everyone reminding you how great you were together. I tried to salvage the relationship, I really did. I tried going back to why I loved music, playing only music I enjoyed listening to. It didn't work: I put my fingers to the piano keys, and I dutifully played the notes, but that spark just wasn't there any more. Even worse, it felt too much like I was trying to reclaim my 'glory days'. I told myself that I knew from the very beginning that I'd never be a professional musician, and I admitted to myself that I'd never be the admired musician that I once was: those days were behind me. I moved on.
My creative nature, however, was still very much alive. Eventually I discovered my knack with words, and writing became my career. I started baking and decorating cakes as a hobby, discovered felting, started going to the gym and took up Mandarin evening lessons after work. Five years on, I've made good way in finding out who I am without music, having previously believed that music was all that there was to me.
I thought that the story had ended happily enough, until relatively recently.
I began to stumble across musicians and artists who reminded me that music can be fun- for example Pentatonix, who have successfully proved to the world that a capella can be awesome, and Steam Powered Giraffe, who perform as steampunk-style robots. I rediscovered old idols, from Imogen Heap to The Beatles. I started properly listening to music again. I started to sing along.
A few weeks ago, a friend posted on Facebook about a taster ukelele workshop, and something went 'ding' in my mind. I signed myself up, roped another friend in and went to the workshop last week. By the end of it I was smiling so much my face hurt. Yesterday I went to a ukelele shop, tried out a few, and bought one. I also signed myself up to regular group lessons, so I can play music with other people again.
Since since adopting my ukelele yesterday, the only times I've put it down are to bake and update my blogs (and you know, to sleep etc).
After all this time, I think my romance with music may have been rekindled.
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