Recently I started taking piano lessons after a gap of about 25 years. It gets me out of my brain, learning the piano. So much of the practice is just the practice. Playing a little bit, every day (or nearly every day). Scales over and over and over again. Making a mistake and going back to the beginning. There’s no cheating on piano. There’s no revelatory formula that Isaac Newton figured out centuries ago that will suddenly make piano click. There’s just practice and practice. Fingers on the keys. There’s a base level of work you have to put into it before it sounds like anything, but when it starts to come together and you hear yourself making music, it feels glorious.
I don’t write for pleasure as much as I’d like and I’d like to get back into it. And just like the piano, it has to start with fingers on the keys, every day (or nearly every day). Most of what I write will just be practice and most of it won’t be publishable, but that really doesn’t matter. I don’t practice piano for the performance (though performance will be a part of it), I’m doing it for the doing it. I want to write because I want to. It doesn’t have to be “productive”, it doesn’t have to be a side hustle, it just has to be doing. Another dynamic verb in my life.
