After many years and several different teachers I was assigned to a teacher that was new to the program but not new to teaching music. She had a great ear and a dynamic, encouraging teaching style. She paid attention more than anyone else every had. I was very excited. Working with her would be tough but rewarding.
After a couple weeks I was told that she had decided not to join the program but would teach on her own out of her home. Years of useless attempts at interactive communication at home had taught me that the answer to every question was “no.”. Finally, my junior year of high school I walked out of Illinois Wesleyan University’s Music Building and their Piano Pedagogy Department.
At college I met many people my age who could play much more difficult music than I ever tried and would sound better at the first sitting than I would after months of teaching my fingers where to go. Sometime after college I found out from my mother that she always wanted me to be able to just sit down at the piano and have fun with it; to play like my grandmother played. My grandmother had a whole notebook full of popular songs going back to the ’30s and would pound them out during holiday get togethers while my aunts sang along.
All those years of classical piano lessons, all those hours of practicing, all that frustration at no support and no way out, all those other things I didn't get to do and none of it was for me. It didn't raise my mother's esteem for me. She did not respect me any more for it. It was just to fulfill her desire to be like her mother that she couldn’t do for herself.
I haven't touched a piano in decades.
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