Performing Music Again?

The minute I walked through the door Nana was reminding me to play the piano for the other seniors at dinner, and along with it reminding me how much I didn't want to. She had that wide smile and mischievous glint as she asked, too, as if she knew and enjoyed how divided the prospect made me feel. For I didn't know why I was so afraid to play. In Portland I'd put out a bike helmet on Hawthorne Street and sang with my guitar - made 37 cents too - but I'd been scared then too. I couldn't even look up as I sang, so I bet no one heard me. It was guitar, though, not piano which is an instrument I'm far better at. I was terrified of performing on an instrument I'm supposed to be good at.

It came up a couple more times before dinner too, inevitably at the moment I started hoping she had forgotten - after looking at student letters from the school she had volunteered at, after going through pictures on my laptop, and again after a wind strong enough to throw cars blew up out of nowhere, followed minutes later by a fierce rain, followed by an eerie, uneasy sunshine. We even played a game of checkers for the right to abstain from the piano. I lost - Nana cheated, and announced it with a laugh. She got me to play a couple blues tunes while Liz, Papa's main caretaker, was still here. They said I was good, and it gave me more stage fright than the actual playing, and Nana insisted that I should play on the dining hall piano. It felt the same as when I played on the piano in Bahcesehir Koleji and suddenly became aware of small lungs breathing and turned to see a pair of my Turkish students glowing behind me - that unmistakable feel that I was somewhere I didn't belong doing something I shouldn't have been doing.

Well, I did end up playing, delaying and fumbling all the way. I played Blue Monk and later a sort of medley - All Blues until Nana hovered over me and whispered "Summertime" in my ear until I segued into minor. And all the while, conscious of the performance-style nature of what I was doing, I heard myself from years past pushing the keys and watched my old music training struggling to flow through my fingers. It was a trial. I didn't like feeling that way, the way I'd felt before. I didn't like feeling like a musician. But that's not entirely true - I like performing on guitar and self-taught voice much better. It had to be the thought, I realized, of playing this instrument I'm supposed to be an expert in after studying music all my life, being praised for it (as I was), and knowing I now was no good compared to this past that I have tried to reject.