The Gambler

"Slow down, we've got time left to be lazy..."

The song trips through my head as I climb the echoing stairs up to the top of Glidden Hall. Strains of muffled music drift through improperly soundproofed walls as I emerge onto the sixth floor--the practice rooms seem to hold a preponderance of trumpets tonight. I can hear them blaring through at least three different closed doors, their brassy, strident tones a contrast to the quiet tinkling of someone practicing a high piano solo on one end of the hall and the lilting strains of a violinst just starting to scrape through scales on the other.

I walk past the trumpets to the relatively quiet section furthest from the steps. There's only one light on in this small hall lined with rooms that are closer in square footage to large closets than anything else, just enough room for a piano that's just starting to drift out of tune. The Asian girl in the occupied room has a look of intense concentration on her face as her fingers dance over the keys, drawing forth chords and runs and chromatics the likes of which I could never hope to produce. But my sigh of envy is as silent as my wistful glance at the baby grand at the end of the hall as I step to the room opposite the virtuoso and close the door on my small upright, all I really need for tonight. I know enough to leave the real instruments to those who can properly use them.

I've always been an indifferent pianist--though I took lessons from age seven to age fifteen, I never really dedicated myself to learning any more than the basics of the art. Also, I've barely practiced for almost four years, so whatever skill I once might have possessed has mostly vanished under fingers that fumble where they once flew over eighty-eight black and white keys and a mind that remembers the theory but has lost the ability to apply it to life.

Nonetheless, I still enjoy playing, and while I may have let my skills with this particular instrument lapse into half-forgotten muscle memory, I can still manage to eke out a tune. And I have never lost the reverence, the love of being able to produce my own music just by pressing on a few keys in patterns handed down through generations of players that somehow still manage to sound like they're just for me.

"So just take my hand and know that I, will never leave your side..."

I've carried this song in my head all day and it's time to let it out. "The Gambler" is a relatively simple song, just a nine-chord progression with a few arpeggios added in to make things interesting without taking away from the lyrics. I found the music for free online and decided that dusting off my unused piano skills was just as good a method of procrastination as any other. It takes me a matter of ten minutes to plunk out the accompaniment, though my fingers still fumble if I think about it too hard. They're remembering, though--thumb goes here, B flat scale has two black keys, use your first finger so you can shift to the third for the next chord--and I know that if I practice the run-throughs enough the chords will be second nature before too long. As soon as I attempt to put words to music, though, both voice and fingers slip. The eternal problem of the singer: listen too hard to what you play and it's tough to sing the tune, but focus too hard on the lyrics and your hands seem to stop working properly.

The one thing I always forget about music is that if you don't practice it, you lose it. There's no way to get around this, unless you're the kind of virtuoso still racing over the keyboard across the hall--the rest of us need to go over things again and again and again to teach our fingers and our brain and our voice to remember where to go next. So I know it'll be a while before I can find the time to practice again and even when I do I'll have to go over the same chord progression, the same exercises, and I'll probably be sick of this song by the time I learn it properly and I'll certainly never be able to replicate the violin solo in the second verse or the horn chorus that comes in over the bridge--but then I remember my roommate practicing her violin and complaining about her lack of new material, the French horn player in Lincoln hall that I can hear practicing on Tuesday nights, and I smile, because if anything can bring people together, it's the chance to play. And even as I pack my already-wrinkled sheet music away in a folder bursting with pages and pages of thin black lines and tiny dots, music in its nascent form just waiting to be given birth by hand or breath or bow, I know that I'll be back.

I'm humming again as I head back to the stairs.