Insecurity and emotional baggage
Dispatches from the Imperfection Lab
Apologies for not posting a single practice video for weeks (I am too scared to check how long it’s actually been). I received a very long visit from the Insecurity Fairy who convinced me not to post any of the practice videos I was recording because, in her words, I’m a terrible incompetent pianist with no talent, everything I play sounds awful, and if I posted any videos everyone would immediately figure out that I am actually a fraud and hate me forever.
Also, there is no Insecurity Fairy, all this is just coming from me.
(Ironically, my practice videos probably sounded better these past few weeks because after being ghosted by a piano technician who kept canceling on me repeatedly for months, I finally got a new tech in who took care of a lot of issues and made the piano sound so sweet, click-free, and of course in tune. Now that the weather is warmer in LA this week, my piano has readjusted itself and things are a little off again.)
Because the concerto has been so much work and taken up so much of my time, I haven’t been able to give a lot of the new solo rep I learned enough attention to feel comfortable performing it this spring. Out of necessity, I’ve started bringing back old pieces from years past.
This may sound weird, but in my entire piano-playing life, I’ve never relearned years-old rep for performance; my teachers always spurred me to learn new rep and hustle to get it performance-ready on time every year. It never occurred to me, the past few years, that I could save myself a lot of stress and pain and use already-learned pieces in programs.
Because I’d never done this before, I was really anxious about going back to old rep. Old pieces of music carry a lot of emotional and psychological baggage: that passage I could never get right that my teacher kept harping on, the thorny few measures that took forever to learn because they didn’t use standard harmonies my brain could hang onto, etc. So imagine my surprise when, filled with anxiety and dread, I started relearning Liszt’s “Les jeux d’eaux a la villa d’Este” (what a mouthful) and it came together after minimal review.
This video was taken about half an hour after I started reviewing the opening two pages! I felt intoxicated with forbidden knowledge: no wonder the big-name concert pianists go around wielding the same pieces over and over again! It’s so much easier to work on music you already know! As for some of the baggage I was so worried about, it turns out that the space of a few years lessens it significantly. I found myself playing with a sort of ease I hadn’t felt when I first played this back in 2018 or so.
We’ll see if this ease holds as I continue relearning and refreshing old rep. In the meantime, I really hope the Insecurity Fairy doesn’t come back.