I hesitate to say I’ve started practicing piano again for fear of jinxing my self-discipline, but I’m making the statement. I’ve started practicing piano again, in large part because I’ve quit spending time with Amazon Prime Instant Video. I now have evening hours free that need to be filled with worthwhile things. One of those things is the piano.
I have no hope of being a great musician, but I would like to think that practice could turn me into a competent one. In any case, it’s beneficial to the ways in which I’m now ordering my life. It reveals lessons I’d forgotten or hadn’t thought about in detail previously.
One such lesson is that practice produces trust. The more I practice, the more my fingers remember. They know where to place themselves. They and my mind, which is slower to remember than my fingers, begin to trust that the right keys will sound because my fingers know where the keys are. At some point, the finger placement will become an unconscious act. I may or may not be aware of the change, but it will happen as long as I keep practicing.
The writing life and any other pursuit is no different. The more I practice, the more natural the act becomes. I know when I sit at my table or sit at my piano that I am about to begin the work of the writer or of the pianist. My mind and body sit in that attitude, and I start to work, trusting that the words and the notes will come, not because I’m sitting there but because I’m sitting there in active state. I’m practicing, and I keep practicing until the right words and notes come forth.
Image: bokeh burger (Creative Commons)