Sunday, September 04, 2005

If music be the food of love

I own an electric keyboard which I use for the sole purpose of propping open my bedroom window. I'd never considered this worthy of comment before, or listed it among my eccentricities, but my brother (who's used to my strangenesses and indeed shares many of them) noticed it this weekend and pointed out that this is somewhat unusual.

To be fair, I didn't buy it for its window-holding-open ability, it just happens to be the right size. But I don't play it, and never have. I bought it back in early 2002, or maybe 2001, with the intention of learning to play it, and have made very occasional attempts to do so ever since. The problem is that I have no patience, and can never admit to myself that I'm not good at something. So rather than starting from the beginning and trying to learn the basic principles of which notes are which, chords and octaves and things, then moving on to playing some simple tunes, I get a piece of complicated sheet music, sit down and try to work out how to play it. Then when I keep going wrong, I give up.

I would also like to be able to play the guitar. I have dreams of being in a pop group some day. And I'm not quite ready yet to accept that it's unlikely to ever happen. As a wise but fictional man once said, if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything. So all I have to do is get my mind to cooperate with my dreams.

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