Memory Slip

After the concerto competition, I fell in love. “Finally!” clicked my heels as I paced the Conservatory hallways looking for an empty practice room. Hearing a clarinet, I’d stop and peer through a small window to see Pi, his back to the door, practicing long tones. I’d tap our secret knock and he’d smile in the mirror at me. Then I’d return to my hunt for an empty room. Practicing took priority, even if I was in love.

Those were the days of the 4th Chopin Ballade, a work said to contain “the experience of a lifetime.” Throughout the piece, Chopin evades expected tonalities yet always, eventually, surrenders to them. He hides melodies he later reveals. The opening measures of the Ballade, for example, are like the sighs that yield to the unlacing of the corset. The theme that follows is simple and meandering, unaware that transformation lies ahead.

My work on the Ballade culminated in a master class the week before Valentine’s Day. I was prepared. I was confident. I was in love. And that night, I was nervous.

My right hand began, but my left hand—poised to play the opening melody—hesitated, and forgot what it was supposed to do. I forced through it, but the performance was marred. I stumbled in the upper-register filigree leading into the second theme, smudged chords I’d never given second thought to, and botched the sweeping D-flat major arpeggios at the climax. Surprisingly, I played the fiendish, contrapuntal coda better than I ever would again. But the damage was done.

The pianist Charles Rosen has written that, “the finest pianists, when they are not in their best form, do not give a mediocre or moderately good performance, but tend to produce a disaster or an outrage.” I fled the hall after the class and found Pi in his practice room whittling reeds. Holding my head in his arms, he consoled my grief as he always would. “Oh, my dear head.” The next day he drove me to the ocean, where the white noise of the sea erased it all: Chopin, Beethoven, and the dream of becoming a concert pianist.

Ten months later, I left formal music training at the Conservatory to study poetry, literature, and writing. In the summers, Pi and I road tripped across the country to chamber music camp. I’d arrive without caring that I hadn’t touched a piano in three weeks. The memory slip still haunts me, but I may have learned more from forgetting in that moment, than if I’d performed flawlessly, by heart.

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Slip 1

The first time it happens, I am playing Bartok in the sanctuary of the Presbyterian Church on Main Street.

The finale of Bartok’s Sonatina is a reeling gypsy dance, and I play it fast and straight, with zip. I slip on four little measures right before the B section, repeating a phrase where there is no repeat written. Like slick cassette tape, my mind folds backwards to the precise spot where a musical loop would be imperceptible. I continue on to the end of the piece without reacting to what is the best of all possible errors. I smile, bow, and return to the pew where my family sits applauding.

“Mistake!” my little brother hisses. “Mistake!” I pinch his arm because even though he is a brat, he won’t yell in church. No one else suspects a thing. Bartok sounds modern and angular; it’s spirited but hard to hum along with. The mistake of four little measures is a secret between me and my brother. No harm done.

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Time, Alla Breve

Growing up on a farm meant growing up with chores. Plant the garden. Pull weeds. Pick up rocks, “—but just the ones bigger than a doll’s head; they make it hard for things to grow.” The rhythm of any given day was constant yet varied, and my dad knew it so well that he didn’t even need a watch to measure the passing hours.

I remember standing on the tops of his boots, my fingers hooked in his belt-loops. “What time is it,” I asked. He turned his face to the sky, and my personal slice of shadow shifted left. “What time is it!” “It’s 11:30.” With an exasperated half scream, I might then let go, falling fast to the dirt and crumpling into myself like a shot rubber band. “I don’t believe you! You don’t know.” So he’d pull a worn wrist-strap from the pocket of his jeans, and we’d look at it together. 11:30. I stared long and hard, as if memorizing the position of the hands on that old Timex was the secret to telling time my dad’s way.

I left the farm to master time through music, moving to San Francisco to study piano at the Conservatory, where for two years, my list of daily chores rivaled those I had grown up with. Practice with the metronome. Play while counting aloud. Conduct while singing solfège. In the practice room, I could check the accuracy, mark the differences, and measure the changes of time. Check, double check, check. There is logic in rhythm and meter, of that I became sure.

Like my dad, I learned how to make a little magic out of my endeavors. With Bach, I keep time the way a Formula 1 engine keeps time, smooth and precise. With Brahms, I might let the meter and phrasings run away in romantic contradiction together. I know the time signature and the number of beats per minute, of course, but in performance, I would never hold up the score or consult the metronome to prove it. The best ruse I have is, simply, to play, conjuring the spell as if from the sky.

Several summers ago, while home for a visit, I overheard my dad talking with a neighbor as they came out of the small town bank. “Yes, she’s been in California more than ten years now. Still doing piano. She’s always been very independent.” He climbed in the truck and we headed home. “What time is it?” I asked. My dad leaned forward as if attempting to see beyond the frame of the windshield. “It’s 11:30. Almost time for lunch.” I closed my eyes to the sun and felt myself letting go, falling fast backwards.

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