Daydreaming by T. Brown
Mikaela P.
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Daydreaming, a composition by Timothy Brown, is what I'm playing in my artwork. I studied this composition in preparation for my 2022 MTAC online submission. Over the course of 2021, I worked on Daydreaming and two other pieces. This was the most difficult of the three. I've been taking piano lessons for about eight years, but after the 2020 pandemic, they were discontinued, and I lost interest. I began online lessons with a new teacher after the pandemic subsided, which was particularly challenging. Concepts seemed more difficult to understand, and practicing didn't give me all the support I needed. Since I only had lessons once a week, I turned to YouTube for guidance. I became aware of how much younger the other students were when I observed how they performed the piece. Maybe 8 or 9 years old, playing the piece much better than I could. I felt I wasn't good enough, which negatively impacted my relationship with the piano. I started exhausting myself during practice, holding myself to a very high standard, and hating myself when I couldn't perform as others did. I misunderstood the purpose of the piano and forgot that anyone could play a piece, but not everyone could play with feeling. Emotion is something that is felt, something genuine, something you could only understand if you put your true heart into your work. As I recorded my piece again and again for the submission, beating myself up every time I messed up, I came to realize I was just playing to play. Not playing to feel. One last time, I made an effort to think of the piano as an easel for musicians. That it’s not a graded assignment, and that I could play with my emotions once again. And so I did.
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Piano I feel is my outlet to not only express creativity, but release emotion into my pieces. From playing pieces written by the classics, to even making up little songs of my own, piano has always been there to support and comfort me.
