An Unlikely Friend

Time stood perfectly aloof, and within this stillness encapsulated by a familiar atmosphere, sat dozens of diligent pianists who’ve practiced tirelessly for countless hours to master their pieces, all in summation for an individualistic desire. For some, this competition is merely an opportunistic hearsay, a subtle boast to endow a sense of accomplishment within sly conversation. For others, the stage is an inescapable cage, a forced practice instilled onto them by their parents who hold the key to their freedom, woefully imprisoning their child within solid bars made of unfulfilled goals and lifelong regrets. For me, I aspire nothing more than to play and affirm testament to an unlikely journey, with an unlikely friend.

In the early stages of my youth, I was introduced and exposed to a lot of extracurricular activities. One of which was the practice of piano. The core of our living room laid rest to an upright piano made of spruce wood and was dressed in a white veil-like cover to allow for props and a lone metronome to perch themselves on top of without causing scratches and dents. As curiosity got the best of me, I asked my mom when and where she got the piano since I’ve seen it lie in the same spot for as long as I can remember. She told me it was an heirloom she imported from Korea and that it was the only valuable thing she brought when immigrating into Canada and proceeded to tell me about her wishes for me to inherit it as I aged. She then followed up with a cathartic question that would eventually come to mold the person I am today.

Would you like to play with him sometime?

How could I say no? Even as a youngster I understood the emotionally taxing toll of immigration, to leave family behind and to start over in a foreign land, baggaging the only item precious to her. As I pondered over the significance it had on my mom, and why it was so important to her that she couldn’t leave it behind, I learned to sight read, start practicing scales and chords, and learned a few songs. At first, it was a glamorous pleasure to play with him. We would spend hours playing games together, exploring different soundscapes and fiddling with various melodies. But it got stale. And with time, the games no longer seemed to exude the same glamorous pleasure it once did. Instead, they oozed repetitiveness and lack of life. Everything seemed to have been explored and all melodies lost their sound. Each note began to fade away until I could no longer hear the piano.

Eventually, I began to slowly stop practicing the piano, but I did every so often for the sake of my mother’s endeavors. The repetitiveness kept chewing at my spirit until it was on the brink of swallowing it whole. I succumbed to a gradual parallax in which time and everything around me stood perfectly aloof as I spiraled deeper and deeper into a motionless, null state of mind with every passing key pressed upon the tip of my aching fingers. Over and over and over again I’ve endured the tempestuous longevity of practice and the dense sentiment it drowns me in for years on end. I despised playing this thing.

Months have gone by until I’ve last touched that thing, and I had no intention of ever doing so. But one day, as I was about to storm upstairs wistfully enraged by a minor upset in my life, I caught it in the corner of my eye. I brought myself to unravel the velvet cover and smash it with the base of my fist producing a disturbing sound. I kept hitting it, as if to project my bottled anger onto this thing like a ragged punching bag. It kept screaming and I kept hitting and hitting until eventually I was dry out of anger and was left solely with sadness. I remained seated in front of the piano but instead of striking it mercilessly, I played a single note. That note turned into a small melody and the interlude of that small melody fixed itself into Liszt’s Nocturne No. in A-Flat Major, a masterwork that projected my sorrows pitch perfectly. Each note no longer seemed like a dreadful burden but instead resonated purposefully with my circumstance. Unbeknownst to the tears falling down my face, the piano shined brighter than ever before, illuminating and guiding me out of a dark place and for the first time in my life, I found solace playing the piano. A melancholic atmosphere surrounded itself around me and never before have I felt so calm and intune while playing. What changed? Why have I never experienced this before? As I kept playing, the piano retaliated and hit me with a realization. It was all my fault. He was not to blame for the repetition of games, it was I who always wanted to play the same games. He was not to blame for the sudden stop of melodic exploration, it was I who discontinued the search for new tunes. He’s been abandoned all this time to collect dust as I selfishly thought of him as the upbringing to my unhappiness when in fact, he’s been a loyal friend diligently waiting for me to return like the commendable Hachikō. Recognizing this, I wept insatiably in apologetic cries to reprimand the relationship between me and my friend in hopes of allowing me to play with him again. I now understood the reasoning my mom brought him along overseas into Canada, and I am truly thankful that she did. I am thankful to have played with my friend once more.

Moments away from the big performance, thoughts rapidly barraged my mind like the flash on a zero shutter lag camera, but unlike a camera, any trace of a captured memory instantly dissipates into the void of lost. My nerves were restless and it was hard to accurately project the score in my mind. I looked up and stared attentively into the blank ceiling. The sound of Chopin’s Op 25: No.5 played by a contestant peacefully muffled into a faint white noise and thoughts were frequented less and retained for longer. I thought of the reason why I’m here in the first place, and how our journey together outshines my fear to perform in front of an audience. That although the roots of our odyssey began without much noise, it continued to crescendo until a climactic point, an ultimately impromptu performance showcasing the conquering of our endeavors. We’ll leave it all on the line and recite our unlikely journey through rich staccatos and adagio, throughout docile pianissima and passionate fortissimos, emitting melodic wavelengths that resonate in full. It was at long last our turn to take the stage. Just me and an unlikely friend.