Skip to main content

Tickling the Ivories Again

This past month, I had the chance to get up and perform again!  My friend, Jennifer Olsen, has a piano student whose father happens to be the choral director at a local junior high (not my former school, Forsythe Junior High, but the rival junior high, Slauson).  He was looking for an accompanist for the seventh and eighth grade holiday concert, and he contacted me.  With only five days before the concert, I was a bit nervous about the music, but c'mon, it's junior high choir.

For several years now, my confidence in being able to play in public has waned.  Basically my confidence in just being a human being has been flushed down the toilet, so it made sense that my musical abilities would come into question in my mind too.  But with the new, empowering experiences that this past year has given me (and especially moving to a new place), I wanted to start believing in myself again.

One thing that has always held me back is my belief that I need a diploma hanging on the wall to validate that I'm any good.  If I don't have a degree, I must not be good enough to play.  My patriarchal blessing spends a large portion of its two pages discussing the skills that I will develop in college being a blessing to me throughout my life.  I have always felt that there was some other skill that I should have developed in college (and that I WOULD have developed had I just graduated).  However, I feel like it's time to accept the fact that music is it, degree or no.  After all, when I look back on my life, some of the greatest blessings and happiness (*cough* my kids) have come through music.

And after talking to Jennifer (a woman who DOES have a degree in piano performance), she told me that the diploma doesn't matter; all that matters is if I can actually play the music.

So I accepted the challenge to play for the concert.  I actually practiced quite a bit over the weekend, just making sure I didn't end up with one of those "musical mishaps".  And when I showed up for rehearsals the following Monday, it made me happy to see the conductor's surprise when I could do basically anything he asked me to do.

Tuesday night was the performance.  Just a little rinky-dink performance in a junior high auditorium, but for how I felt, it could have been Carnegie Hall.  It's hard after years of musical hibernation to come out and feel the performing sun shining on my face again....along with several hundred faces watching me!  But I tossed aside all the doubts and nagging, destructive thoughts running through my head and decided to just focus on the moment.  I've prepared my whole life for moments like this.

And what a difference a little bit of self-belief can make!  Yes, I made a couple of mistakes here and there (John insists he heard nothing, and I believe him), but it was so good to get back up on that musical horse again.  I've been told during some pivotal moments in my life that I'm just not good enough; that I'll never become anything, or ever make a difference, or that I'm a really bad person.  It was good to write a really great, positive experience into the Book of Larisa again.

Comments

  1. Who needs a piece of paper? You're crazy talented and I'm happy to hear you're getting the chance to share those talents!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SURPRISE!!

When the pizza guy came to the door last night, here's what John saw: It took a few seconds for John to process who the pizza delivery man was, but when he did, he was incredibly happy (and couldn't stop saying "heeeeyyyyy....".  It was Jared Moran, John's best friend. And me, I just knelt down, right then and there, and began repenting of all the lies that I have told over the last four months, hiding this most amazing surprise :-)  I told Sarah the other day that I was glad to see the light at the end of the falsehood tunnel, because if I kept this up much longer, I was destined to end up in liars' hell... Jared ran the Air Force marathon with John last year.  It was his first marathon, and from what he told us, his last.  However, he called in June and said he was coming again, but I was supposed to keep it a surprise from John.  I'm not sure what changed his mind, but we sure are glad he did.  John hates runnings marathons alone, and ther...

Like Dominos....

It all began with glare.  Simple, obnoxious, I-can't-stand-it-anymore glare. Our 60" rear projection TV in the family room was basically unviewable except after 10 o'clock at night.  The glare from the windows was making it impossible to see anything during my 10 minute lunch break each day, and something had to change. Too, the TV didn't fit in the entertainment center from Germany.  John, wanting bigger and better, hadn't considered that the space is only 40" wide.  For the past five years, I have been nagged by 6" of overhang on both sides of the TV stand. I went to Lowe's to price blinds.  $1,043 for five blinds, and that was at 20% off. I figured a new TV would be cheaper than that.  I was right, even with the state-of-the-art receiver and new HDMI cables that sly salesman told us we needed to have. But where to put the old TV?  It just needed a quiet, dark place to retire. Glo's bedroom.  Her TV was a relic from the paleoneoneand...

Getting Hannie Home

Knowing that Hannah was leaving on her mission to Ecuador February 7, I needed to get Hannie home.  To her credit, she took care of mostly everything out in Utah, including finding someone to buy her apartment contract.  When I got there, it was all about driving her around so she could take care of last minute things (selling back her books, mailing back a rented book, turning in her work stuff at the library), but really it was about some good old girl time too.  Eating at some of Provo's great eateries and buying cupcakes. Kitty, sampling some of the goods. Ah cupcakes.  Sweet Tooth Fairy bakery has become a tradition every time I visit Utah.  Seriously, they sell the most delicious cupcakes and cookies there.  It made sense to me to buy eight cupcakes for the two of us for a three day drive home.  Little did I know... One of the things that I have done too many times to count now is helping my college-age kids move in and out of their apart...