The Right Tune

Becoming a happy beginner

I wrote this personal narrative 2015 as a high school senior, for my AP Lang class. This is a piece about trying things you're not good at and letting go of perfectionism.

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When my father returned from one of his trips to China, he gave me a special gift. It was a rectangular black case the length of my arm. I opened it, and gleaming in the dark, felt interior was a silver flute. At five, I was too young to understand what my gift meant. But before I knew it, my eager parents were walking me up the steps to meet my new flute teacher.

Inside the dim, musty room, the teacher kept encouraging me to pick up the flute and play it, but I refused to even touch the silver serpent. I didn’t play a single note during my first music lesson.

Now, I understand that I didn’t play that first note because I was afraid.

After the “lesson,” my parents gave up on raising me into a world famous flutist. The only time I encountered the instrument again was in middle school, when I found the black flute case in my living room. I opened it, flinging up a cloud of dust. Nestled in the cheap velvet, the silver flute, which was a lot smaller and more toy-like than I remembered it to be, had rusted.

In fourth grade, my parents finally succeeded in coaxing me to play the quintessential instrument: the piano. In the warm-lit, flower-wallpapered lion’s den of my teacher’s home, I warily tapped out “Lightly Row.”

Imagine that you stand on the edge of the proverbial cliff and look down at a dark, endless abyss, your stomach knotted with dread. You squeeze your eyes shut and, against your reason, you jump.

That feeling of jumping to my doom haunted me with every note I played. I hated the piano, and music in general, because it was something I wasn’t good at, and as a child I only enjoyed what I was good at. Perfectionism, I reeked of that poison.

My fingers fluttered across the keys as I played the scales, which I rehearsed to no end, but I felt like garbage the moment I hit one wrong note. My classmates seemed like petite Beethovens that could dash off Moonlight Sonatas as they entered fifth grade with me. How could I spend two months learning one simple Christmas song? And despite practicing daily, I couldn’t play in time with the metronome to save my life.

When my family moved to Saratoga, I announced that I would not look for a new piano teacher. “Do you enjoy piano?” my dad asked me.

“I do, I just don’t have the time to practice,” I lied.

So, at the age of ten, I had taken the easy way out by quitting, and would never again have to deal with struggling to learn something I didn’t naturally excel in or like. Or so I thought.

The lounge is dark. The room resonates with laughter, the clunk of billiard balls dropping off pool tables, and teenagers singing “Rolling in the Deep.” I lean against the old, rickety piano so I can feel it hum into my arms. I marvel at my two friends playing the famous song by ear. I want to contribute to the magic and the electricity in the air.

Enchanted by the energy in the lounge, one day in late May of junior year, I succumbed. I rushed to the piano in my living room, wanting to be the performer, not the audience.

I wanted to… try. 

I opened the ancient beast. Creak. The golden hinges gave way after a nudge, and I looked down at the familiar maroon cloth that covered the piano keys, cloth that reminded me of the black interior of my old flute case. I drew it off and sat down at the piano bench to play the C major scale, the easiest one. I played it correctly.

A ray of hope blooming in me, I pulled out the sheet music I had printed out, “Summer” by Joe Hisaishi. I had fallen in love with “Summer” and was determined to master it. It took me about five minutes to decipher and play the first measure, incorrectly.

My rosy dreams of playing sweet, silky melodies after falling in love with music vanished like smoke. I am far worse at piano than I ever was at ten years old. Now, my fingers, like foreigners flown into the wrong country, hesitantly hover over the ivory keys, questioning the descent. When my fingers do land, they strike up and down, producing halting plinks as I look at the music score and squint.

Is that an A? Or a B? And is it the B key on this octave, or that octave? Am I remembering the key signature and all those squiggly sharps and flats? I get frustrated because I can’t read notes anymore, let alone attempt to sight read.

So, I keep on my stand a cheat sheet that labels all the notes. As a young adult, I go through my old Alfred’s Basic Piano Library Level One and Two books with their bubbly fonts and cartoon frogs jumping on keys. I struggle.

The fact that I struggle is rewarding. It means that I am accepting my flaws and working on them, not running from them. I struggle for those sunlit moments when the notes blend together the right way, and my fingers learn to dance together, and I’m immersed in a sonic river that I want to keep dreaming in.

And that cliff? It’s real, and so is the leap I take, but the ominous abyss is a lie. The abyss is not doom; its darkness is limitless possibility and I am not afraid of it. Every note I play in my living room resonates through the curtains and the cream-colored walls, echoing in the warm, stone caverns of time and telling my five-year-old self, don’t be scared. We’re safe here. I want you to pick up the instrument and I want you to try.