ON HOW THINGS ARE BITTERSWEET

(I will do justice to do the good piano recital some two weeks ago, I will write about it properly, well, kinda, at least.)



In anticipation of the piano recital, I did some very strange preparation: I began practising the piano again. Other people in their right minds would reserve tickets in advance, or tell their folks they’d be coming home late because the event would last for about two hours starting from 7 PM, or perhaps start to listen to Schubert because the recital would be on his works, but I am not a person with a right mind. I did call ahead to inquiry about the tickets, but I did nothing else as the above. What I did was playing C major up and down the piano several times, several nights before the recital. I played it the way I did during the last few years of my studying the piano: firstly in 4 octaves up and down, then the ‘third-apart’, the dominant-septime in all variations, the ‘mixed-motion’, the white-black, and finally, the cadence in three positions. I winced at the realisation of losing my speed and power, how long will it take to gain those back? I cannot afford three-hour practice nowadays, not because I am busy, but because my heart isn’t that sturdy anymore. Nowadays I am much more fragile when faced with my own weakness. Playing the piano well is of course one such weakness, and with each wrong note, each missed beat, bitterness rises from the back of my throat and sticks stubbornly on my palate.

So why I began practising again, I really don’t know. Maybe it was to drill into my brains the fact that I wasn’t good enough to play, wasn’t a perfectionist enough to be able to sit unmoved at the piano for three hours at one go, so that during the recital I wouldn’t be too jealous of the performers’ skills. I am, after all, so inadequate as to be compared to them. The idea was maybe to remind myself not to waste precious time agonising over “what-ifs” and “if-onlys”, because there really is no what-if nor if-only. I am much too inadequate to even say what-if.

The night before the recital was spent practising Heller, that sweet tune I’ve been meaning to memorise. After several tries, I told myself that whatever the performance was going to be like the next day, the practising behind it was undoubtedly painful. And that to the best of my knowledge, there are very few things more painful than practising the piano.

The day of the recital was spent giddily; I was about as excited as a young child being promised a big block of chocolate. E asked what I’d do in between the after-office hour and the time the concert began. Because my office-hours ended at around 4 PM, and the recital wasn’t until 7, that was why, and I told him I was gonna stick my butt around the office and find something to snack on, no I wasn’t gonna go home because there was a killer traffic jam outside and I didn’t want anything to dampen my excitement for the day.

Driving to the place only took me a little over 15 minutes, but it did take me quite some time to find a parking space. I was quite surprised to find that E was already there. Turned out that it wasn’t the only nice surprise for the rest of the evening.

As we had our dinner of the surprisingly good fried rice (was it really good, was I just so hopelessly hungry both for food and a good company?), I caught a glimpse of a familiar face. A nicely sculpted face, belonging to a fair-skinned young man, that I must have seen somewhere before. The person in question was happily tucking into his plate while having casual chat with his friends, and it suddenly struck me: this was of course Stanley, the Stanley that amazed me some months back, when he appeared alongside Ananda Sukarlan during a piano concert. He was Ananda’s page-turner then, and as you can read from the piece I wrote about that event,I was so dumbfounded to witness such a young person levelled with Ananda’s playing.

Upon finishing our rice and tea, we dashed to the auditorium door and were greeted by the ticket seller who was surprisingly kind enough to ask me: “Student or adult ticket?” I fought back a laugh: I couldn’t be mistaken as a student. Every day, and I mean every single day, students in their 20’s address me “Ma’am”, which in Indonesian also means “Mother.” A student, oh no, not I. I have many children and they are already over 17. The next thing happened was finding the best seats were still available, oh, like, wow.

When the recital began, who would appear as the page-turner if not Stanley? This time I didn’t dwell on stupid thoughts as “how could such a young person be that well-read in classical music”, “I was nothing when I was his age” et cetera, because hey, I am nothing even today. Days of practising the piano before the concert really paid off: I was more focused into the music. The performers were an Indonesian prominent pianist who I always thought looked really cocky, and a Japanese one who looked as humble as the other cocky. It was a 4-hand recital, and I was curious on how two people, four hands, could move perfectly in time with each other at exact, split-second beats. I know good friends can finish each other’s sentences, but the idea is still bizarre. I for one never let myself be close enough to someone as to be able to finish off his sentence. I used to share a bed with N, but I didn’t know how his mind worked. So I sat there gaping for the good part of the evening, astonished at how Iswargia Sudarno read Miwako Fukushi’s mind and she read his mind, and Stanley read both their minds.

It was a show of pure talent and sheer hard work, surely neither of the pianists used my approach to piano exercising: feeling intimidated at the very sight of a piano, do quick scales and finish off with a Heller or Bach. The familiar bitter taste still rose from the back of my throat, and found its way to my palate, but I no longer saw the point of kicking myself for being an inadequate piano student. I am, after all, not able to practise 3 hours a day, let alone eight, as clearly done religiously by these Gods. They played Schubert’s works impeccably, from the softest pianissimo assai to the loudest fortissimo assai, from andante to andantino to moderato to allegro to presto, from dolce leggiero to tempo di Marcia, each note distinguished from the other, each Adagio sostenuto clearly conveyed, each Allegro maestoso beautifully articulated. When the auditorium broke in a loud applause, that bitterness on my palate had almost pushed its way to my eyes. Good thing I’m good at fighting back tears of jealousy.

During the ride home I told E how I noticed how Stanley turned the page too early sometime, how Fukushi smiled and mouthed “Not yet!” and played the rest of her bars from memory, and how impossible it was for a mere human being to memorize such long music passages.

“I don’t think it impossible,” he said.
“Oh it is,” I insisted. “You might learn by heart the story of a Harry Potter book in detail, but can you tell me how many commas are on the first page? Memorising classical music notes are like that, that verbatim.”
But that bitterness on my palate hadn’t dissolved completely, they ticked all over my mouth at the late realization that E was right: it wasn’t impossible for anybody to memorize long music passages, it was impossible for me.

When I dropped him off near his office I was actually saddened by a nice evening ended so soon. Everything had been as cotton-candy sweet, except for that familiar taste inside my mouth, but it didn’t change anything. Anything good is always accompanied by something bitter, it seems to me. My inadequacy makes me appreciate the good music more intimately, and for all bitterness it may take, I am willing to endure more nights inside that auditorium, sitting gaping and wondering what-ifs, cursing the Music Gods for their overabundant talents, applauding and fighting back tears of jealousy.

I guess you won’t know what sweetness is if you never know how bitterness tastes like.