The lights go out and I can't be saved.

I’ve been playing piano since I was 6 years old.

I started while I was living in South Surrey, along with my two older sisters. My teacher, Leslie, was a dream. She actually came to our house to teach, and she knew the right balance of pushing me and laughing at my kid jokes. She let me choose the pieces I wanted to play, and wouldn’t let me back out easily when I wanted to give up on them. She was kind and organized, and created the perfect environment for my passion garden to grow. My interest in piano had always been there. But she was my watering can. I’d watch my sisters play before I was old enough to take lessons, and mimic their hands on my jeans, watching them from the stairs. When I was finally old enough to start, once I’d mastered even just a couple bars of Mexican Jumping Beans or Row, Row, Row Your Boat, that was all the house would hear for days. Piano became my sole way of pleasure and escape. When my mom said no to another serving of Honey Nut Cheerios at breakfast, I was hammering away at the piano. Or my sister said I couldn’t hang out with her and her other 9 year old friends, the piano was going to hear about it. It was a way of moving through my emotions, even though I didn’t quite understand that yet.

We moved to my current hometown when I was about 10. Although the move out of Vancouver was needed, this meant saying goodbye to Leslie. She had been so perfect, I didn’t expect finding a new teacher to be particularly difficult. And I was so, so wrong.

I first began with Marge. She lived down the road so it seemed like an obvious choice. I wasn’t used to going to the piano teacher’s house, so I was already a bit uncomfortable. When I walked into her home I was first affronted with the smell of cat piss and curry, so I wasn’t feeling particularly enthralled. She was, stout, and even from my first step into her home, I felt her condescension. She didn’t want to hear me play anything I’d learned before. I was soon told the way things worked with her, and that was playing classical music much below my learning level, and to learn a new song every week. Learning this quickly with songs I wasn’t interested in was very difficult. I wasn’t to play any of my old music with her, and everything she taught me was geared towards taking a Royal Conservatory Exam, which I didn’t plan to do anytime soon. I began to loathe my lessons. Piano had been so... smooth for me before, so effortless and enjoyable. Now my parents had to almost force me to practice. After about a year, I requested a new teacher, and having observed my unhappiness, they agreed.

I then moved on to Chrissa. She was a kindergarten teacher. She gave out candy and had a huge projector in her living room that I could watch P!nk music videos on before my lesson started. She was very sweet. And a very bad teacher. She didn’t offer me any structure, and could barely give me feedback on my pieces. She didn’t know how to push me. And, she was kind of foolish; she put the bowl of candy outside of the room where she couldn’t see me, so I would stuff my pockets like a little goblin, and return the next week for more. I learned solidly about 3 or 4 songs with her before she moved away to a neighbouring city that my family was not prepared to drive out to. So our hunt resumed.

Next, was Arnie. Arnie is one of the most eccentric people I’ve ever met. In fact, he’s still the person that pops in my head whenever I use the word. He was tall and had wickedly blue eyes, surrounded by many wrinkles and ragged gray hair. He wore almost the same outfit to every lesson and was a terrific piano player. But, I had many moments with him in which I would play a song, sit for a couple minutes, thinking he was taking in my playing or just collecting his thoughts on what to say, and he’d be asleep. Hunched over, and suddenly shaking himself awake and speaking very quickly: Yes yes, that was very very good, might you play it again for me. He would also ask my parents for rides home after lessons and not speak the entire drive, as well as cancel lessons last minute over voicemail for surprise trips to Argentina. It was more my parents decision this time to find a new teacher.

We eventually discovered Lisa. She was teaching out of a children’s Christian school, and was in a classic rock band with her husband on the side. My sister, who was getting as frustrated as me, was preparing to quit. My parent’s one requirement was to complete an exam before we stopped playing, and Lisa stated she could pick up where Arnie had left off. Lisa did allow me to play some pieces that I liked, but would give me versions much below my skill level, and was gearing me towards the Royal Conservatory similarly to Marge. She was also equipped with a bit of a temper, which I had never experienced from my teachers, and every once and awhile I’d get lashed out at, which made going to lessons even harder. I guess being in the Christian school wasn’t enough to remind her of what Jesus would do.

At this point in my life, I was starting to roll down on the roller coaster of depression. We all go for a ride at some point, and I was just starting to creep up to the big downwards part that makes your face feel like it’s being pushed into the back of your skull. Piano used to be this beautiful escape for me, and it was now something I felt like I couldn’t escape from. It wasn’t helping me move through my emotions, it was now creating them. It had become void of any positive feelings for me, and I was absolutely defeated. After about a year with Lisa, that summer I told my mother I wanted to quit piano. We’d done almost four years of searching, and I wanted out. We both knew what it used to mean to me, and that I had to have truly hit the wall to come to my decision. So, she said let’s both think about it until lessons start again in September.

Over that summer, depression was taking me through all those crazy loops and uncomfortable upside down parts that you freeze in the air for a moment and wonder if your seatbelt will disconnect and you’ll fall through the air and splatter all over the ground. As piano was no longer holding my hand on this ride, Coldplay reached out. Yes, Coldplay. Coldplay sat by me and felt the Gravity, and a Rush of Blood to the Head as we went Up&Up, and told me… Don’t Panic. When I had found Paradise on Youtube, I became absolutely obsessed with Chris Martian; a handsome Pisces with children named Apple and Moses. The album Parachutes was the only one we had downloaded in our family iTunes library, but I kept exploring Youtube and clicking on all the recommended videos, and discovered Viva La Vida, and Violet Hill, and then; Clocks. Clocks awakened something in me. I listened to it again and again, delving completely into this other world it transported me into. The lyrics are the perfect balance of comprehension and confusion, and relatability. It inspires and comforts me simultaneously. The part where Chris sings: Nothing else comparesssss lifts me into a different vibration, with the hard beat of the drum at the end... Coldplay’s music is the bearing and connecting of souls. It’s otherworldly. And the feeling this song gave me, I wanted, I needed to be able to share it with other people. I wanted the ability to share the authenticity and power of what this song made me feel.

I was still learning from Lisa when I discovered Clocks. I’d been trying to figure out the chords by myself for a while which said a lot, as I’m not particularly gifted with figuring out music by ear. I eventually requested the sheet music. And I didn’t want shit music, I wanted sheet music. I wanted Chris’s version. I wanted what was played on stage. I wanted to be able to perform the exact same feeling that Coldplay made me feel.

I was presented with a Level 3 arrangement in a different key with no lyrics. I tried, I really did, to see if the rhythms could be right, maybe if I played it just a bit faster, or added my own notes in certain spots, but my attempts just made me more upset. By that August, my feelings about piano felt solidified. I did not want to play again that September. I was done.

Even though it felt like my experiences with each teacher had completely crushed my passion and hope of ever enjoying piano again, my mother had somehow preserved a fragment.

A couple weeks before school started again, my mother slid me this fragment across the kitchen counter. An excitedly torn out article from the newspaper; Melissa Summerland. A new teacher. With availability on Mondays or Wednesdays. Only 20 minutes away from us. Spots going quickly. Just one last try Gillian, she said. Just one more push.

Melissa lived further out in the valley. The drive to her was accompanied by farmland and an awe-inspiring view of the mountains surrounding us. We pulled up to her cozy and cottage-like home. She welcomed us in, and not to mind the Shiba Inu puppies following us around, she breeds them. I walked into her piano room; a beautiful baby grand, a violin mounted on the wall. I could see more puppies playing outside through the window out the back, and when I sat down, I could see the mountains through the window out the front. She was soft spoken, gentle, and when she looked at me, it felt like she knew how much this moment weighed for me. She said, Please, play whatever you want. So I sat down, and I played, my fingers feeling lighter then they had for years. Once I was finished, she said You are so very talented! I’d love to teach you. And my heart burst.

I cried in the car all the way home.

A few weeks into lessons with Melissa, I asked her about Clocks. How I wanted the real version. The original version. I didn’t care how hard it was. And she said Of course. It’s difficult but I know you can do it. And that next week, she had the sheet music printed out for me. With all the proper credentials on the right, and the lyrics, and even the guitar chords if I was ever feeling really ambitious. This song, was a gift. It wasn’t just my way back into piano, it felt like a way back into my life.

I worked on that piece every goddamn day. So much I wondered if my family got tired of hearing it, which I’m sure they did. But every time I played that song, it was like making up for lost time. It was unwinding my past frustration and anger and loathing of what piano had become, and allowing it to blossom again into the passion garden it had been when I was a kid. There was a point where I could play it practically blindfolded. And even now, 5 years after learning it, I still have it memorized. I feel it is eternally bonded to me, because it represents not only the resurgence of my own freedom, but of a pivotal moment of my own spiritual growth. I don’t think my fingers will ever let me forget.

The lights go out and I can't be saved,

But I can.

I can.