After years of obsessive learning, my piano sits silent – and I’m happy with that | Brian Hanson-Harding

Oon a hot June day in 2015, I retired after 34 years of high school teaching. I packed up my classroom, went home and threw my briefcase on the ceiling. Then I drove to meet my new piano teacher, Mark.

I had worked for more than three decades as a busy English teacher with an endless stream of papers to mark and precious little time to experiment or learn new skills. Now I was determined to make up for all that I had missed. I wanted to finally master the piano and learn to make music.

I first started playing the piano at the age of eight. Four years later I dropped it to take up a job as a paper carrier, but I always felt that music should be a part of my life and that one day I would return to it. I didn’t touch the piano again until several decades later, when my seven-year-old son started taking lessons and, to support me, I took jazz lessons with him. But, overwhelmed with work and raising two small children, I soon gave them up.

This time I wanted things to be different. I told Marc that I had a specific, specific goal: to play Clair de lune by Claude Debussy, a piece I remember hearing from early childhood. The way Debussy used sustained notes and silences reminded me a bit Thelonious Monk, my favorite jazz pianist. My plan was to start with Debussy and then move on to jazz piano.

For most of my adult life, I never felt like I had time to be creative. I loved music, but I didn’t know how to “make music“. So when I realized I could retire early, it seemed like a dream come true. I imagined myself as Phil Connors, Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Daydoing nothing but practicing the piano day after day, going from complete novice to virtuoso in one frantic sequence of montages.

So in June I dove in head first. I forced myself to practice and relearn how to read music, reciting the same mnemonics (like “All cows eat grass”) to remember my keys that I was taught as a student. It didn’t come easily. I felt like I was learning a new language, but one I should already know. I would try to memorize passages quickly so I wouldn’t have to read the sheet music, especially the Clair de lune with its many sharps and flats. But Mark insisted I go on and little by little I got better.

Determined that there would be a day when I would fully master this piece, I set myself a deadline: I would perform in front of a gathering of friends on my 60th birthday. For months I did nothing but train furiously. When the day came, about 30 friends and relatives crammed into my dining room to hear me play, and apart from a few minor slips, I managed to do so without embarrassment. People applauded warmly – they were my friends after all. I’d won a competition, I’d done a challenge, but I still didn’t feel like I was really “making music.”

After that I continued with my lessons and tried some jazz pieces by Monk, but something changed. Although I could play to a decent standard, I never felt like I was playing well enough. There was always more to learn: the circle of fifths, chord inversions, seventh chords. My progress was painfully slow; Obviously I wasn’t a natural. And playing it didn’t give me the same satisfaction I felt when I heard beautiful music played by others.

And then came the pandemic. When almost everyone in the world threw themselves into their hobbies, I joined them. Every day I couldn’t wait to go out into my garden and stare at all the things that had changed overnight, even if the bugs had eaten my broccoli or my spinach was gone; I was fascinated to see my starter soar no matter how bad the last loaf had turned out. But what had ceased to give me any pleasure was the piano.

I had grown to hate hearing myself play music badly. I got no pleasure from the act of missing notes. I didn’t want Zoom lessons; I didn’t want to be reminded that holiday music sharing was banned indefinitely. Even though I really loved music, I realized that I wasn’t driven to do it myself. I wanted to listen to recordings of A monk playing the Mysteriosonot the failed attempts of my fingers.

Now that so many things that used to give me pleasure were denied me, I began to focus on the few things I could do: gardening, hiking, biking. I realized that I don’t have to be this renaissance man that I always thought I had to be. I could just do what I liked – and it wasn’t the piano anymore. So that spring, after almost five years of classes, I quit.

I still love music; I regularly go to concerts and jazz clubs. But now my piano does nothing more than sit silently in my dining room, displaying family photos and gathering dust. And I’m perfectly happy with that.