i hate white keys

Edith Sitwell once said "I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent."

wow. edith would not have liked me. in fact, had she been at one of my concerts, she surely would've left. because what i do on the piano is entirely for the incompetent.

i can't read music. those little black notes on sheet music scare me more than daddy longlegs running around without supervision.

so maybe you're wondering how i play piano then? well, for the first couple years of playing, i only played the black keys. and you'll see why.

i was performing at my university around the lunch hour one day in college. this politician came up to me and said he'd pay me to provide musical entertainment for his campaign party. he was running for senator or something like that. so being the hungry and poor college student that i was, i said yes. he said he enjoyed my voice and guitar playing.

that's why i was so stunned when i showed up at the campaign party and he asked me to play the piano. only. no singing, no guitar, no microphones. just the piano sitting in the middle of everything.

i could've said "sorry dude, i don't play the piano" but $200 was involved so i decided that maybe those few piano lessons i took when i was younger would miraculously re-surface.

i was sorely mistaken.

nervous, i sat down at the piano, which might as well have been an oboe. it was awkward and i didn't know how i was going to pull this off. but i'm so glad i did, because i learned how to play the piano that day.

i sat down and looked at said piano and decided that i would choose to play the black keys since they happened to be raised up, and also there were less of those keys. so i started playing the black keys.

for some reason, i chose to play every other black key. and i started noticing that i wasn't hitting any wrong notes. and the music kinda came naturally to me. so one note led to a chord and a chord led to a melody and before i knew it, i was somewhat playing this piano.

for some reason, i started playing "my heart will go on" impromptu-style. it just started coming out of my fingers and i was playing it. couldn't explain it. still can't. i guess that's why people call it a gift? cuz i sure didn't work at it. it just came to me. then i started playing other songs naturally, that i had remembered. for some reason they were 80s love songs. not sure how that happened, but i was just glad to be playing something and not getting fired and yelled at.

so i continue playing. did i mention i was asked to play for 2 hours? yes. 2 hours of totally winging it. but played i did. and faked it, i did.

something happened that was borderline miraculous as i sat there playing cheezy love songs. it came so natural to me. i felt the piano keys like i'd been playing for 15 years. i understood musically what was happening. and i knew what would happen if i played certain notes. so i kept playing and different songs would surface.

so for two hours i played some rendition of "my heart will go on" and "i can only imagine" sprinkled in there with other various and sundry musical classics. i fell in love with the piano in those moments. and i got paid for it. not a bad deal.

but surely i'd be found out! surely someone would see i was a fraud of a pianist and kick me out of the really nice hotel ballroom the party was held in. but no. it was just the opposite. in fact, at one point during the night, a man came up to me and said "i recognize that song." i was terrified he was going to say "why are you playing celine dion over and over again?" but instead he said, "ya, i know that song. isn't that a mozart piece?"

i snickered. and said, "of course it is. i'm awesome."

no, really, i told him i didn't know what i was playing. because i didn't. i was just letting my fingers create music and it was more natural than breathing. but still i only ventured on the black keys. with an occasional white key mistake.

that officially launched my budding piano career. i still mostly play on the black keys and i still can't read music. i dont want to. it stresses me out to think about all those little black notes staring at me from those white sheets of music.

hope you enjoyed the video. that really happened. i've learned not to rest a water bottle on the piano when i'm about to play it. pianos and water bottles do not pair well with one another. consider yourself warned.

so what can we learn from this story? God gives us different gifts for different reasons, even when we're not expecting it or asking for it. use your gifts. you have them for a very specific reason.