Battling the Piano

As I've mentioned before, I'm the ward Relief Society pianist. I have had this calling at least five  times, starting when I was 18. I've spent many a meeting fumbling through an opening or closing song, progressively slumping down to hide behind the piano as each wrong chord is struck. Sometimes I wish I'd never admitted to anyone my "ability" to play. Why do I continue to put myself and everyone else through my weekly jittery hymning? I don't know why, really. I guess a part of me keeps holding on to this wacky idea that the more I do it, the easier it will become. I've had faith that I'll get better. But that hasn't really happened.

The frustrating part is, I can play all I want in the privacy of my home, with few bloopers, but no matter how much I practice and how well I play alone, the moment I get to church and the chorister stands up, I freeze up. Not every time, but often enough that I have this constant feeling of humiliation hanging over me.

When I was given the list of songs for this month, one of them was "True to the Faith". I've always thought it was too hard, so I never really tried to play through it. But rather than immediately requesting an emergency hymn swap, I sat down at the piano and tried to play it. It was definitely rough, but I decided that with some serious work I could learn it. I wanted to challenge myself, see if I could wow everyone with my sudden huge improvement. If nothing else, it could be a beautiful, inspirational story to tell.

During the next two weeks, I played the song slowly, over and over, rehashing each chord and run until it was good and learned. But it's not a slow song. It says on the top of the page that it's supposed to be played "vigorously".
So I practiced it fast, again and again and once more. It's actually a pretty fun one to play. I wondered why I'd avoided any attempt to play it before. I felt pret-ty accomplished to at last be able to add this song to my repertoire.

Today was the moment of truth. I felt oddly confident. I looked forward to showcasing all my valiant efforts. I kept silently hoping and praying that I'd play it well, for my own benefit, but moreso for all the other ears in the room who've surely had enough of my butter fingers. I had this cute little vision of me not messing up this super tricky song. 'Cause I'd worked so hard on it.

I'd like to say I didn't make any mistakes, but that would be a lie. It didn't go nearly as well as I'd wished it would. I got through the short intro without a hitch, which was a success itself (that's typically where it all goes downhill), so after that I was trying to not be scared or let any negative thoughts take me over, but instead I began to feel more nervous than I've ever felt before! My hands were shaking like crazy, which obviously makes finger maneuvering difficult.  But I was so stinking determined to get through it. Maybe a lot of the problem is I just think about it too much. My mind starts racing and I get so worried about hitting all the right notes that I inevitably flub up. =/

The good news is I didn't totally ruin it! =) I mostly kept up and got through it even though I had to drop a few notes here and there. I thought that overall I did "okay", which is at least a huge improvement over the dreadful way I played two weeks ago. I did such a lousy job that day I felt the need to send an apology email to the R.S. presidency and chorister. Starting next month I get to choose the hymns. =) 

Since I didn't play "True to the Faith" at church as well as I'd rehearsed, I asked Cora to get video evidence of me successfully playing it from the comfort of my home to prove that I can actually play it.  

Hey, maybe they'd consider letting me play from home, via Skype or something like that.

Hmmmm...

=)