the piano

The piano is everything to me. Even when I was a kid, before I was even really good on the piano, I poured my heart and soul into playing. Everything I felt, everything I dreamed, everything I saw and everything I heard, my entire life went into playing the piano. Many didn't, and still don't understand. I never excelled to a place of being able to play proficiently in a band or on a worship team. I'm going through a season right now of working my fingers to the bone to be able to be an accompanist in a situation like that. But for almost 10 years, the piano and I were lost together in an intimate relationship. I told the piano everything. I cried tears of joy and tears of deepest pain over its keys. When people didn't, or simply couldn't, understand who I was or what I was dealing with, I told the piano. When joy overwhelmed me from time to time in my childhood, I expressed it through the piano.
I explored many different types of music. From pop, rock, and film scores, to broadway classics, Jazz and classical. For years I excelled in classical musical. It was massively structured and had little room for improvisation, but in every note and chord, there was a heart and emotion that struck the very soul of your being. After a performance a few years ago of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, I felt I'd reached the peak of my ability in Classical music. So I decided to try the ever harder Jazz music. I moved to Washington while I was still in the middle of learning Jazz, but it instantly captivated me. Everything about Jazz screamed, "Unique". From the sound to the chord structure, it was what I'd been wanting to play since I started at 7 years old. It was immensely more difficult than Classical music. It is music that includes qualities such as "swinging," improvising, developing an 'individual voice,' and being 'open' to different musical possibilities. Needless to say, it is a wide genera with many possibilities that I had very little time to explore. Still I try to learn the qualities of Jazz music, and I am still captivated by how incredible it is.
However, I can't take the piano with me everywhere. I can't play it in a band or for worship, and I can't throw it in the back of my car and take it everywhere with me. So about two years ago, I picked up the guitar that had sat in the corner of my room for years, and taught myself to play. Transferring much of the logic and theory I had learned on the piano to the guitar was easy for me. Instantly I started my journey in playing guitar and singing on worship teams. I was never known as a piano player. Always a guitar player. And this crushed me.
But I didn't play for people's approval. As I moved quickly through worship team after worship team, playing and singing and living what I'd always wanted, my heart was still given away to my piano. And after awhile, I stopped playing the piano for people. My last performance was Christmas Eve 2011. It's been almost a year since I've gotten on a stage and played the piano for other people's enjoyment. Recently I've played for people on request, just as they happen to be in the room when I sit down, but the piano is my secret love. I don't need words for it to understand me. It just knows. Without it, so much of my life would have been lost. It has guided and directed my heart and desires. It's more beautiful to me than most anything. I can't describe to people with words what the piano does for me through music. But the one thing I can say, is it has held a massive part of my heart and life for almost 10 years that no one else could have been able to.