tickling the ivories

[mamajoan]

One thing I've started doing with my little snippets of kid-free time lately is playing the piano. It's shocking to me that being a pianist is such a big part of my sense of self (right up there with mom, writer, feminist, scifi fan) and yet there could be people who read my LJ who don't even know that I play. That's because I never post about it, which in turn is because I almost never do it, at least until recently.

But playing the piano has been one of my main sources of stress relief since I was a kid, and recently I have really enjoyed the opportunity to get back into that. There's nothing like a nice half-hour spent wrangling with a Bach fugue (currently the e-minor from WTC Book I; also the fiendishly complex g-minor "my socks are dirty") -- or, for those more melacholy Romantic moods, the second movement of Beethoven's Pathetique -- to make me feel rested and human again. Truly, it's more rejuvenating than spending thrice as much time sleeping.

Of course, it's not like I can't play when the kids are around. But Isaac can't let me do anything like that without wanting to participate, and he certainly lacks the patience to sit through an entire piece; so our family-piano time equates to ten minutes of me picking out "The Wheels on the Bus" while he bangs his way up and down the black keys and Ruthie bangs indiscriminately. Still valuable, I do feel, but not exactly relaxing. ;)

Comments

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that you played the piano! I am rather jealous!

[jorend.livejournal.com]

and yet there could be people who read my LJ who don't even know that I play

A self-negating statement. :)