kayleen bobbitt.

Until I met her, my music was struggle. My body would hold onto the chords; my ears, to the flaccid, murky sounds emoting from my body. Every sinew was controlling every movement. The moment I sat down before her and began to play, she knew it. She was a professor by profession, my dear professor who never taught. Instead her hands glided horizontally, almost never vertically, effortlessly and intentionally. The paradox was remarkable to me--I never thought a pianist could play so controlled without control. Effortless = effort less? The idea was falderal to me. But her music wasn't an idea; her music was staggering rapture and light. And I wanted out of the dark.

Her hands on the eighty eight dared me to believe in silence as sound, to trust in melody to pierce through every divisive fragment of bone and marrow. She "taught" me that there is no past in creating music--only present and future. She "taught" me this without ever saying, "There is no past in creating music." She sent me, instead, to a librarian to check out Abby Whiteside's dusty, decrepit Indispensables of Piano Playing. The book lead me to venerate double barlines while fearing barlines (i.e. to try to always think of a piece of music in its entirety rather than measure by measure). The book lead me to realize mistakes are only mistakes when I become frustrated by them and when I go back.

She "taught" me that music won't flow from inside of me until emotional and physical tension flow out of me. She "taught" me this without ever saying it. I spent piano lessons without ever touching the keys. I'd lay on the floor consciously tensing, releasing, tensing, releasing every body part. I'd breathe. There on the ground, I wouldn't deny tension. I'd learn to acknowledge it and to let it go. It took me over a decade to finally play with my body, to trust it to be its own metronome. She'd point to torso and then to heart, where her hand would rest. And she'd never have to say it; I knew. Music. It's intellectual: an electrifyingly intellectual pursuit. But it becomes something other than music...noise, mere noise, if it's not flowing from my body and from my heart. And without peace within these, there is no music to be played.

She "taught" me.
I'm still learning and re-learning the wisdom she never spoke, only lived.