The entire self is a story we tell ourselves without even realizing it. Like music, the self assembles in real time. Moments are stitched together to make a seamless whole. Reactions moment to moment assemble a personality, a behavior, a summary of self. We think of a melody or a symphony or a song or a self as one solid thing, when it’s just this and this and this and this, finite moments pretending to be infinite.
The more I practice piano, the more I invoke the coordination of sight and sound and concentration and memory and physical motion and intellectual analysis, the more I feel my brain return to itself. The more I am able to understand that perception is a fiction the brain is constantly creating. That our seemingly intact, seamless experience of consciousness is actually a series of discrete moments we stitch together so quickly we’re not even aware we’re doing it, creating movies out of still pictures, solid substance out of fluid particles, progression out of stasis, cohesive self out of individual, unconnected moments. That I assemble myself as surely as the way a series of notes tricks a listener into hearing what sounds like a song.
Part of what’s been puzzling me throughout this whole experience is the very question that puzzled the doctors at its inception: When did this start? And so I’ve been endlessly tracing my steps, as if locating that moment was the key that could unlock the door to all explanation. But at a certain point it doesn’t matter anymore where you started; at a certain point, it only matters where you are now, and where you go from here.
Of course, when you’re performing a piece of music, especially for other people, it does matter where you start. There must be a context. It doesn’t make sense to begin a piece in the midst of the middle development section of a sonata, or initiate listeners with the bonus content of a coda, the tail end of a piece. Playing music is just like telling a story: You begin at the beginning, and let everything else follow from there. This allows the listener the opportunity to understand how the entire piece unfolds from the smallest of gestures at the very start, how the first measures hold the clues to everything—structure, melody, shape, intent. Everything is there, if they are able to listen, if you are able to lead them to it as a performer. If it works, they will understand, even if what they understand is not your own specific understanding.
But when you’re practicing it doesn’t matter where you start. In fact, it’s better to start anywhere but the beginning. The more you can deprive yourself of context, the more you are able to fully pay attention to the work. Start at the end and work backward. Isolate the difficult measures of a secondary theme. Transform the dazzling, flashy, fast passage into a technical exercise, break down the cadenza, mirror your right hand with your left to understand the finger work, work in dotted rhythms, work at half tempo, work at the slowest tempo possible. Look at it all inside-out. Don’t allow yourself to be lulled into the story—unless, of course, it is the moment in your practice when you must be lulled, to understand what work is still left for you to do.
Practice is the back of a needlepoint, all tangled threads and chaotic stitching. Performance is the front, the pleasing picture whose existence depends entirely upon that messy hidden work. It’s the process, the daily practice, the work nobody sees, the hidden music, that makes performance possible.
Illness is the back of a needlepoint, all tangled threads and chaotic stitching. Full recovery is the front, the pleasing picture whose existence depends entirely upon that messy hidden work.
I’m not performing yet. I am somewhere in between the chaos and the finish. I am recovering. And so I can start anywhere. I don’t need to know where the beginning is, I don’t have to determine where it might be, I don’t have to choose a precise moment when it all started, and when it all went wrong. Because in practicing, it doesn’t matter, and the more I practice, the more I see that in life it doesn’t matter, either. I pick a point, and work from there, and that’s the work, that’s the point. Every day I work a little longer, increase my stamina, nourish my brain, and every day it helps me stop the futile quest for the answers to everything, which of course could never be located in one perfect, precise moment. Every day I continue to start where I am, because I’m not performing, not yet. I’m practicing.
37
June 2016
By early June, I have been practicing my piano brain therapy for almost two months, and when I check in with my doctors, they all ask me the same thing: “What the heck have you been doing?” My therapist and my neurologists note my improved facility with words, my improved ability to make connections, to understand concepts; my improved ability to have insight and to be able to express that insight, my improved ability to follow complex instructions and remember things. They notice my boost in executive function, my increasing ability to tolerate noise and other sensory information, my overall improvement in general. “Are you taking any new medication?” they ask me, and I tell them, excitedly, “No, this is my brain on music.” I share with them the findings of this highly-selective, ultra-biased, one-person ongoing research study I’m performing, and while they’re skeptical of its true efficacy, not to mention its replication possibilities, they’re happy to encourage me to keep going. “If it’s helping you feel better, keep doing it,” they tell me.
So I do. I try to spend forty-five minutes each day practicing piano, helping my brain get better, helping my
