former talents of mine
I stumbled across a video of a pianist today.
They were playing liebestraum no. 3 by liszt, the last piece that I was learning before I quit piano, at least quit classical piano. That was about 3 years ago now, maybe a bit more. It's honestly a big regret of mine, even though the effort you need to go through to maintain the skills doesn't necessarily fit in my life now, piano fills a need in my life that I think I may be lacking right now.
The feeling of learning pieces that you've come to love just from listening to them, and bringing them to life on your own keys, from your own fingers, is a spiritual experience in itself. Mastering a piece is a never-ending battle, and there's always changing methods, sounds. Depending on my state of mind, I could play a piece with completely different emotions behind them, a new sound every time.
While visual art is up to interpretation, and there are so many different ways to be great, classical piano has that predetermined gold standard (to some extent) that just makes the urge to improve so much easier to strive for.
When you master a piece, at least in your own terms of mastering, it's almost as if you own it. At that point, whatever's on the sheet music truly doesn't matter, it's how you perform it that turns it into an entirely new creation.
I keep having the thought of starting again, trying to regain the skills I once had, but I can only have so many projects for this summer, this being one of them. At this point I have writing and visuals covered, maybe I should toss in music?