On Practice and Patience

For over a year now, I’ve been trying to learn Claude Debussy’s “Arabesque No. 1.”

I took piano lessons from age ten into my teens and college years, and then off and on as an adult when my children were taking lessons. I can’t say that I have much natural musical talent, but I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of playing the piano. So for the last three years or more, I’ve been taking lessons again with a gifted and patient teacher, Matt Dorland. Little did I know that Mr. Debussy’s piece would take me so long to master—well, not really master, because that is a wishful dream. But at least I wanted to be able to play from the beginning to the final note without stopping, which, hallelujah, I managed to accomplish today.

I get nervous when someone is listening. Matt told me about another adult student who asked him to sit nearby and do something else, as if he weren’t really listening. So with Matt sitting on the couch looking at his phone, I played and, despite many mistakes, completed the piece without stopping to correct myself. I liked that Matt said nothing when I finished. He moved back to the chair by the piano. “Well, how did that feel?” he asked. “Scary,” I said, staring at the music. “I messed up the ending. And some of the usual spots too.”

There are several sections in the piece that I have trouble with and have practiced over and over again. Hands apart. Slowly. Try not to look at my hands. Just the music. Feel where my fingers should go. Keep the triplets smooth. Add the quarter notes in the left hand, so they work with the triplets. This last part, triplets in the right hand and quarter notes in the left, took me months to even begin to understand.

Why did I stick with this piece? There were many times when I wanted to quit. “I need a break from Mr. Debussy,” I would tell Matt. But the next week, I was back to the piece. Not able to let it go. Maybe I’m just stubborn. I had started it, and I would finish it.

This doesn’t always happen with writing. There are many unfinished writing projects buried in my computer. It does help to have to be accountable to someone, my piano teacher, every week. Without his patient guidance, I would have drifted away.

I remember talking with Matt one time about how writing a poem or a story differs from playing notes someone else has written. Which is more creative: writing or playing the piano?

“Well, no two people will ever play the piece the same,” he answered.

That is certainly true. My creative rendition of “Arabesque No. 1” doesn’t even come close to the ones I hear on You Tube. But it represents my own appreciation of the challenges presented by this incredibly beautiful piece of music–tonal shifts, difficult rhythms, key shifts, arpeggios.

Thank you, Mr. Debussy, for your genius.

Thank you, Mr. Dorland, for your acceptance, your talent, your insightful tips on how to learn a difficult piece—and most of all, for your patience.
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Writing Connection:

In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg says: “This is the practice school of writing. The more you do it, the better you get. . . . You practice whether you want to or not.” She compares writing to a run. “You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it.”  She says, “That’s how writing is, too. Once you’re deep into it, you wonder what took you so long to finally settle down at the desk.” So if your writing practice has lapsed, pull out your notebook and go. Write about anything.

Here’s a prompt to get you started:

Explore a challenge involving music. Or what do you have to say about patience? Go.  For ten minutes. Think of it as practice. Is there anyone listening, it doesn’t matter. Good. No one is listening. Not even Lucy,  _______________________________

“The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” ― Rainer Maria RilkeLetters to a Young Poet

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2 thoughts on “On Practice and Patience

  1. Congratulations, Vic! Your description of the intricacies of the piece would be enough to be too daunting for me to even attempt. It says a lot about your willingness to persevere regardless of the stumbling blocks in your path. That tells me that there is still hope for those long buried writing projects to be unearthed and finished.

    • Thanks, Arlene. I hope you’re right. I need to set a few deadlines, or at least one deadline and finish one project. Lazy summer days find me gazing out at the lake!

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