piano insomnia sonata no. 2

It's hard to measure if you're getting markedly better at something you pursue. It kinda sneaks up on you. One day you're struggling and the next you're Mahler, or at least the closest amalgam to Mahler in your house. Piano is a lot like that, especially as I head into my 4th year of lessons. 4 years rife with blown lessons, crammed homework, european odysseys and a year or two spent trying to figure out how to live a freelance life. All told, I've had maybe 2 total years of devoted, concentrated practice and study, and, go figure, practice really does make perfect.

But the truest test is when it's 9 in the morning, house full of light and the heat rising and you've been up for the last 24 hours or so and your thought processes can be charitably described as fuzzy. That kind of insomnia where you can feel the hallucinations coming on, but you feel giddily wide awake, while dozing off in mid-laugh. When you feel like that and you sit down to play a two movement sonata you've never laid eyes on before and you put your hands down and just play. And out it comes, without even bidding it, your hands are making dead men's music and you when you realize that's you doing it, you just laugh your head off.

That's a good kind of Sunday.

Hm. Trying to remember exactly what I wrote about piano before and failing magnificently.