Tuesday, October 28, 2008  3:19 PM
Lacquered notes
I'm getting ever so slightly worried that I'm ageing faster than I should be, and becoming like my father.
My mission Pachelbel Canon in D project has taken off, and what scares me is how much I'm enjoying it. Practising that particular song on the piano has now become something I take delight in, and I actually want to sit there for hours running my fingers up and down those black and white keys. Because I want to see (and hear) myself get better at playing the piece with each time I hit those notes. Maybe this is what my father takes pride in every morning when he wakes up, when the sky is still pitch black and the birds just starting to wail. I never understood it, sometimes I wake up in annoyance hearing him play, groan and pull the blanket over my ears and sink back into slumber.
This piano thing, coming from me, has got to be the strangest thing I've discovered about myself this year. Because if you knew me then, I was my piano teacher's nightmare and could probably write a book on how to evade piano lessons. I never ever practised and made the people in my house lie to my dad that I had played for hours when he got home so I wouldn't get scolded. The petulant eleven-year-old me shouted at my piano teacher and slammed a door in his face once because I was so tired of playing. I refused to take exams, and I faked the notes all the time because I knew my dad couldn't tell the difference. If no one was at home when my piano teacher came over, I made him tea and we would sit and chat, and it was our secret, because it was a common understanding between us how much I hated playing. As a result, of course, I was nobody's star pianist. I hardly got better, and for the ten years of my life I invested in it - someone else would have risen to Grade 8 or better while I was perpetually stuck around Grade 4. But I never had any desire accomplish something out of those years of piano playing, I did it only because I was forced to, because my dad loved the piano and I was his only ray of hope.
He would actually sit there and watch me play every single day, his disinterested daughter who looked as expressionless as she sounded.
I think I'm making up for those lost years. Ever so often when I'm home, I abandon my schoolwork and choose to practise my song, the one song that is slowly changing my life. And my father walks around the house with an encouraging smile on his face, musing, "it's not too late, it's not too late" when my fingers fumble or seeing how much trouble I have sightreading these days. I only pray he doesn't get child prodigy ideas with me again.
And I've realised how much playing the piano trains your patience. I feel soothed each time I start playing, and sink into the rhythm of it all. Suddenly, all the stress and whatever else I'd been feeling dissipates into the melody. I sound like a fanatic here, but I somehow think this revelation is miraculous in itself.
On another note, yesterday's holiday was spent drowning in work, surfacing only for waffles and prayer with my dg girls, coffee with shimei my wonderful ex-colleague at Female because our conversations always leave me dwelling on them and walking along one fullerton by myself and breathing in the night. I have had many thoughts lately, some of which I want to compartmentalise into folders to save, some to send to the recycle bin and others that I want to send in an email to heaven. I subconsciously typed out my thoughts as I was fiddling with my phone yesterday, and in my daydreamy state, looked for 'God' in my address book under the "To:" column.
Topshop sale: Flattery always works wonders. I had already noticed the Chinese girl at the cashier even as I was walking around the shop so while paying, I told her that her English was very good and that she was very pretty (both which I truly meant), and beaming from ear to ear, she happily offered me information on when the new stuff come in, and when the next sale is.
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