My Keyboard Is My Best Friend - A Musician’s Perspective

As people in my life come and go, as I experience sadness and perpetual confusion, as the world seems to become more and more uncertain with each passing year, I have come to the conclusion that music is my one true friend; it is as vast as can be, both predictable and unpredictable. It can’t judge me, except when I use it as a tool to do so. It can’t disappear. It can’t die. It’s simply there––the one constant in a world that is anything but. My keyboard lives in my room, waiting patiently at all hours for when I inevitably sit down and use it. Need it. Same difference. It knows what I’m feeling but doesn’t ask questions––instead, it lets me ask and answer them for myself. It bends around me, allows me to take the driver’s seat. It’s just there, like a patient, faithful friend.

You see why I consider myself a musician and not a poet?

The word “music” encapsulates a universe. It means different things to different people; to some, it’s a tool to study or work more efficiently. To others, it’s a form of entertainment. To others still, it’s a form of self-expression. To me, it’s none of that––it’s simply everything. It’s life; it’s comfort; it’s home; it’s indescribable. Sometimes I get to grasp its power, while other times it grasps me, incapable of letting go. 

I have considered myself a musician most of my life, attaching various labels to myself to try and categorize my experiences––singer, pianist, ukulelist (yes, that’s a real word), semi-guitarist, and songwriter. Throughout it all, I’ve always been an avid listener and enjoyer of music. I know I’m not special in that way; in my opinion, it’s part of what makes us human. Without music, without the arts in general, who would we be? What would we be? Could we even…be?

I love all my instruments, but unlike men, they’re not created equal. There’s something special to me about the piano, about my keyboard––touching those 88 keys with my fingertips allows me the freedom I so often don’t feel in my own life. So many sounds, so many melodies, so much can flow from this relatively small piece of equipment that, in fact, it can be overwhelming just to look at. I started playing this instrument when I was around eight, and it pains me to say that…I’m still not that good, at least on a technical level. I know how to read music…when my brain lets me. I know scales and arpeggiations and chords and minors and majors and flats and sharps and F#7s and Cm6s. But when I see others play the piano, their fingers moving nimbly, impeccably across the keys, their expressions calm, I feel like a failure. Ten years of lessons, of endless hours, and I can’t play a single page of the simplest Mozart song without a mental breakdown and ages of practice? Maybe I should just give up and leave it to the professionals.

But when I sit down at my bench and start messing around with the keys, I realize that it doesn’t matter in terms of actually making music. I don’t need to be gifted, or even decent, at playing classical songs. I don’t need to beat myself up for messing up the left hand, thereby messing up the right hand, thereby the entire song. I can just play. I can just write. I can just…be. I want to be good, truly good at the piano––I really do. I want to be able to accompany someone without having ever looked at the music, or impress the neighbors of my thin-walled apartment bedroom with Stravinsky. I want to feel like a real musician, even if deep down I know I am one.

My songs tend to be personal in some way. I’ve written about my experience growing up as an only child (oh great, now I have to write an article about this!), my experience with feeling like I’m behind in life, my experience feeling like a burden…sorry, this isn’t a therapy session. All this to say, I often pour my heart and soul into my music. I don’t take it lightly. What I write isn’t sacred, per se, but it’s mine. Even if no one ever hears it, I can look at the lyrics, listen to the low-quality voice memo recording, and say: I did it. This is my mind. This is me. (For better or worse, anyway. Most of my songs are kind of awful and will never see the light of day, at least the current versions of them.) Either way, I have my keyboard to thank for being the tool, the messenger, that connects my mind to something real and tangible: a melody. A song. Music.

I’m finally at a place where I feel comfortable calling myself a musician. Music has always been a part of my life in one way or another, which in many ways I have my parents to thank for, and it undoubtedly always will be. My instruments will always live in whatever room I do––or at least the closet. My keyboard will never be far from my bed, because in some sense it’s an extension of it––a place I can go to at the end of a hard day. A place where I can just be. Even if I’m no Chopin, or even 0.0001% of Chopin, I’ll always have my keyboard. I’ll always have my music. I hope you always have your music, too, in whatever sense of the word resonates with you.