devastatingly human

i walked home today with the little tinkling of piano notes wafting in the air. i caught myself cocking my ears to one side, trying to place the origins. it was my neighbour playing. his all grown up now, being sec 2 and all in THE chinese high school. (funny coincidence considering i was a nanyang girl but ya ok i digress).. he played beautifully. if i don't recall wrongly i used to pound on the piano, but his were tinted soft and exquisitely fingered. well done i thought to myself, it is very hard to be deliberately muted on the piano. two degrees of touch may be the difference between thin and velvety music. and his was really very lovely, the piano keys cushioned sent an understated satin of ledger lines out his door.

but suddenly i went thick with envy and admonished myself for being such a failure. it used to be my job (or so i like to suppose) entertaining the neighbourhood with my tinkering. i'd play the danube, chopin, mozart, famous Bee, till i let my priorities get displaced. now the piano's an empty mantal for bags, shoes, keys, photoframes and hello kitty piggy banks.

i didn't even complete grade 8.

and i felt the sense of loss, regret and envy that every sad pathetic normal human being feels after being displaced.

finis. fatality. the cessation of music in my house save for computed music from speakers and TV; it seems hardly satisfying now that i've relived the glory days of mustering a chopin piece in a space of 6 days with a little help from the neighbour. yes, as you have probably guessed, the first thing i did when i stepped home was to open up the piano and have a little bang around.

it's like riding a bicycle, they say it never leaves you. and my fingers were guided by an invisible force of strange memory and glided over themselves. Relief, felt i, at remembering. but there are alot of things i should not have forgotten and should never ever forget.

maybe now's the time to start picking up those which were left behind in the woods while i trudged recklessly and impetuously on last time.

Joyce Lim unzipped at 12:13 AM with 0 comments
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