I turned back to my music. A Chopin étude. After listening to me play barely a minute or so of Liszt, Mrs. Kim had already made up her mind: I was to learn this étude—but not the whole étude. I was to return next week having practiced just one note.
The first note.
Of only the right-hand part.
For a whole week, that was all I was supposed to play.
She told me I should “strike from knuckle, not wrist.” I should “feel belly button here,” in that one finger, as it rested on the note, so that that one finger was the center of my body. And I should do that, over and over, until it sounded right. What did that even mean? I couldn’t tell. It all sounded the same to me. It sounded embarrassing. Like punishment. Like failure. One week at music school and I was relegated to playing only one note, like some kind of beginner.
I wiped my eyes and then wiped my hands on my jeans. Screw it: I had played this one stupid G-flat for twenty minutes, trying to strike from my knuckle, trying to make my third finger my belly button, whatever that meant, and all that had done was prove that it was possible to play one damn note for twenty minutes. I launched into the Lizst that she hadn’t liked, playing too loudly, using too much pedal.
This piano felt easy, the action quick, the keys responsive, the room bright with sound. It was easy to be loud, to sound full and powerful and accomplished. One note. Was she kidding me? I reached the first cadenza and trilled a decrescendo of alternating chords into the quietest pianississimo I could manage in the small, echoey practice room and felt chills as my hands hovered above the keys, a muddle of pedaled harmonies fading away as I waited through the fermata. Then I dove back in, playing the theme again, this time an even more elaborate incarnation. My tempo was skittish, the pace quicker than the way I usually played it, and I went with it, chasing it through the cadenzas and the flourishes and the triumphant, final iteration of the theme, through the crashing, flashy coda, finally, to the end, with a majestic last chord, the kind of ending you imagine when you imagine a concert pianist ending a piece, flushed with sweat, almost standing up from the bench to make that final chord sound the way it needs to sound, one hand up in the air after the last note, waiting for the audience to stand and cheer and fill the moment with the sound of raucous applause.
My moment was filled with the ambient silence of the practice room, plus the sounds from the other practice rooms: opera singers, pianists, clarinetists, violinists, all rehearsing at once. Reality.
I sat there in the muted cacophony of the practice room noise, letting everyone else’s practice sounds wash over me, and returned to the score. Chopin. G-flat. One note.
“Think like squirrel,” she told me, the next week. “You know squirrel? They run, they move so fast, quick—and then they stop. Very still. So still, nothing moves. They conserve energy.”
I played the G-flat with my third finger, trying to strike from the knuckle, have my belly button there, think like a squirrel.
“No,” she said, batting my hand away. She demonstrated, her powerful hand striking the key in a way that sounded different from the sound that I’d made. “Be totally still. Then play. Then still.”
I tried again.
“Like squirrel,” she reminded me. “They don’t fall asleep.”
Of course squirrels fall asleep, I wanted to argue, but I thought I knew what she meant. The way they freeze and yet aren’t frozen with tension, the way they are able to be still without ever seeming sloppy, relaxed. Was that what I was supposed to do? Play a note and then freeze in time, my hand stuck in a position but without stress or tension? Had I been playing the note and then letting my hand relax too much, when what she wanted me to do was basically play a one-note, one-person game of freeze-tag?
I tried again. G-flat, third finger, strike from knuckle, belly button here, think like squirrel, don’t fall asleep.
“Yes!” She said. “Again!”
I tried again, doing everything exactly as I did before.
“No,” she frowned. “Tension in fingertip only.”
I tried again, G-flat, third finger, strike from knuckle, belly button, squirrel, don’t fall asleep, tension in fingertip.
“Better,” she said, but her face was stern.
The so-called Black-Key Étude, nicknamed for the fact that much of the melody is played solely on the black keys of the piano, begins on a G-flat, third finger, right hand. The third fingertip is the center of your body. All the gravity is there. The third fingertip strikes the G-flat, wrist and palm moving in protectively, and waits. You should be able to lift yourself like a gymnast and balance on that centimeter of flesh. The sound bells, rounds, becomes flat, fades away. You do not move. You breathe. You feel the gravity.
Your hand should look the way it looks when you drop it loosely to your side: wrist relaxed, the plane to your knuckles a natural forty-five degrees or so, your fingers curved, the blood settling into your fingertips. That is where the gravity is, there, in the blood. The trick is lifting your hand to the keys while your mind imagines the hand is still dangling beside you, your shoulders loose, your neck relaxed, no tension.
Though the G-flat sound has died, you are still there, hand crouched in position, balancing around that third finger. You are not moving, but you are preparing. Then quick, like
