Elsewhere

There was a time, somewhere in 2016, when I used to play the piano for someone. Someone I only knew for a relatively short period of time, but who, for some reason, has remained in my memory ever since. I think he was one of the people who reminded me why I loved playing the piano in the first place, even after I had long given up on the idea of becoming a pianist.

He was an elderly man, the grandfather of someone I knew at the time. I honestly didn’t know much about him. We weren’t particularly close, and I don’t think we ever had any long or meaningful conversations. But every now and then, especially when I hear classical piano music playing somewhere, I find myself thinking about him.

I’ve been playing the piano since I was a little kid, thanks to my mother, who made sure that my siblings and I took piano lessons. I’m not entirely sure all of us appreciated it back then. In fact, I’m pretty sure some of us hated it. But I suppose my parents saw something in me, or perhaps I was simply the artsy kid in the family who happened to enjoy classical music. So I was the one who continued taking piano lessons well into high school, while my siblings eventually stopped.

For much of my childhood, I wanted to become a pianist. A proper classical pianist, I mean. I admired people like Maksim Mrvica, who could bring classical music into a more contemporary setting with electronic elements, and especially Krystian Zimerman, who remains one of my favorite pianists to this day. There’s something about the way Zimerman plays that I find extraordinarily beautiful. The depth he brings to every note, a certain weight, a certain meaning, not necessarily through volume, but rather through character, control, and intensity.

I used to dream about studying at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, the conservatory founded by Alfred Cortot. Or perhaps somewhere in Italy, or Warsaw, or even Juilliard in New York. I imagined myself performing with an orchestra in magnificent concert halls, playing for audiences dressed in suits and evening gowns. I imagined the feeling of finishing a concerto, standing up beside the piano, taking a bow, and turning towards the orchestra and conductor to show that they really are the people who had made the performance possible.

I even had an ambition of winning the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition someday.

And I really did love performing.

I remember playing for my friends in elementary school and watching them scream in amazement and get ridiculously excited, as little children tend to do. I also liked to play in my junior high school’s aula, and performed at various concerts and recitals organized by my music school.

I remember the recitals, the examinations, the concerts, the afternoons spent practicing the same difficult passages over and over again for hours, and the sleepy dawn practice sessions while my siblings had swimming practices.

Playing classical piano gave me much more than merely the ability to play an instrument. It really taught me patience and discipline. There was something wonderful about preparing a piece of music in solitude, spending weeks learning every little detail, struggling through the difficult passages, getting frustrated with myself, repeating the same measures until my fingers ached. And then, finally, when I’m ready, letting someone else hear it.

I have so many wonderful memories of studying classical piano. I enjoyed learning music theory and practicing pieces that were probably far too difficult for me at the time. I attended a summer piano camp twice, and once traveled to Paris for a recital and masterclass, which also became a lovely trip around Europe with my mother, my grandmother, and some friends from piano lessons.

I was fortunate to have a childhood filled with music. To this day, I believe that learning classical piano was one of the most formative experiences of my childhood and adolescence. It shaped my appreciation for art, music, and perhaps even certain aspects of how I carry myself. It’s difficult to explain without sounding a little pretentious, but I think spending so many years around classical music taught me to appreciate a certain kind of elegance that doesn’t always have to announce itself. It strongly influenced my approach towards life, how I speak, and even how I think in some way.

But somewhere along the way, the dream of becoming a pianist simply faded.

I don’t even remember exactly why I stopped taking lessons. Perhaps I became too busy with extracurricular activities in high school. Perhaps I wanted to save money for flight school, because there was also a period when I wanted to become a pilot. Or perhaps I simply grew older and began thinking that having a conventional 9-to-5 job would be a more sensible way to make a living.

As far as I can remember, there was no dramatic farewell.

Sometime around 2012, I just stopped taking piano lessons.

I never completely stopped playing though. Every now and then, I would find a piece I liked, print out the sheet music, and try to learn it on my own. Sometimes I’d play for my mother. Sometimes for whoever happened to be at home. Sometimes just for myself. There was no longer a teacher waiting for me for the weekly piano courses, no examinations to prepare for, and no recitals coming up. I simply played whenever I felt like it. The dream of performing in grand concert halls slowly became something I used to have, rather than something I was working towards.

And then, a few years later, I met the elderly man I mentioned at the beginning of this story, who reminded me of a part of myself I hadn’t thought about in a while.

I was introduced to him by someone I was seeing at the time. I remember visiting her house and meeting her grandfather. We talked a little, although I can’t recall much of what we talked about. What I do remember is that there was a piano in the house. I started playing, and at some point, whenever I came over, he would ask me to play.

So I did.

I’d sit at the piano and play whatever pieces I could still remember. Mostly Romantic and Impressionist pieces, like Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 and the Aeolian Harp Étude, or Debussy’s Deux Arabesques. Sometimes I’d play Jaya Suprana’s Fragmen. And when I ran out of pieces, I’d simply let my fingers wander across the keys, making up little melodies as I went along.

I don’t remember him ever asking for anything in particular. He seemed perfectly fine with whatever I played. I can’t even remember whether he said much afterwards. But I remember that he kept asking me to play whenever I visited.

I liked that he never seemed to mind if I made mistakes, or if I played the same piece he had already heard several times before.

Because by then, I had already left behind most of my childhood ambitions of becoming a concert pianist. I wasn’t practicing regularly anymore, and I certainly wasn’t as good as I used to be. My repertoire had become smaller, my fingers less disciplined, and I could no longer play many of the pieces I once knew by heart.

But none of that seemed to matter to him.

He just wanted to hear me play.

And I think that was what made those little moments particularly special. There was no stage, no audience dressed in evening gowns, no orchestra, and no applause. Just an elderly man sitting in his living room, listening to me play the piano.

It was such a simple thing, really. But I felt appreciated. Not because I was particularly talented, or because I had accomplished anything remarkable, but because something I thoroughly enjoyed doing could bring a little enjoyment to someone else.

I suppose I had forgotten how much I missed that feeling.

I remember that he wasn’t in particularly good health. I knew he wasn’t well. There were nights when I could hear him coughing in the bathroom, and I wished there was more I could do. But I didn’t know what to do about it, of course. I was just a young man visiting someone else’s home. All I could really do was talk to him whenever we had the chance, and play the piano whenever he asked. I liked to think that perhaps the music could cheer him up a little, even if only for a few minutes.

Then, one day, I was sitting at the kitchen table, talking to my ex, while her grandfather was resting on the couch in the living room.

From across the room, I heard his voice. Soft, and a little hoarse.

“Davi… main piano dong.“

And so, without saying anything, I got up, walked over to the piano, and played for him.

For the last time.

I don’t remember what I played that day. It was probably one of the same pieces he had heard me play many times before. I don’t remember how long I played either, or what we talked about afterwards.

A few weeks later, he passed away.

It’s strange, isn’t it? How some of the smallest moments in our lives become the ones we remember most vividly. I have performed in concert halls, attended recitals, and played in front of audiences far larger than the one elderly man sitting on his couch. Yet, ten years later, I still remember that quiet afternoon, and the sound of his voice asking me to play.

I sometimes wonder what he thought about while I was playing. Perhaps he was remembering something from his younger days. Perhaps he was enjoying the melody without thinking about anything in particular. Or perhaps he was simply glad to have a little music in the house.

I’ll never know.

And I sometimes wonder whether he knew how much those moments meant to me. Probably not. I certainly never told him. And perhaps, to him, it was nothing more than a pleasant way to spend an afternoon, listening to someone play the piano in his living room.

But to me, it was a reminder of something I had loved since I was a child, something I had slowly allowed to slip away as I grew older.

So I hope those afternoons were as pleasant for him as they were for me.

And for some reason, whenever I think about him, I think about Chopin’s Ballade No. 2.

I can’t quite explain why. I don’t even remember when I first began associating the piece with him. It’s not even a piece I used to play. In fact, I couldn’t play it. I never learned it. And I don’t remember ever listening to it with him. But there’s something about the music that seems to belong to my memory of him. The gentle, almost innocent opening, the sudden intensity, and the way the piece moves between moments of tenderness and something far more turbulent, almost desperate, before finding its way back to a gentler voice. I suppose it reminds me of how quietly some people enter our lives, how unexpectedly they leave, and how much of them can remain with us afterwards.

Like losing a long dear friend in a war.

I’ve always found it extraordinarily beautiful.

Or perhaps I’m simply attaching a memory to a piece of music I find beautiful. I don’t know. Music has a funny way of doing that.

Sometimes, I imagine spending weeks learning the Ballade, practicing its difficult passages until I could finally play the whole thing properly. Then I’d visit his house, sit down at the piano, and tell him:

“Eyang, saya baru belajar lagu ini khusus buat Eyang.“

And I’d play it for him.

I like to imagine him sitting on that same couch, listening as he always did. Perhaps he would smile. Perhaps he would say something afterwards, or simply say thank you. Or perhaps he would simply enjoy the music, just as he had enjoyed everything else I played for him.

But, of course, that afternoon never happened.

I never learned the piece, and I never had the chance to play it for him. All I could give him were the pieces I already knew, played on those ordinary afternoons.

I suppose there’s something comforting about that too. I didn’t need to learn a magnificent piece of music to make him happy. He was already happy to listen.

In November 2017, we lost our family home in Jakarta to a fire. We managed to save our piano, but it had to be moved somewhere else, and over time, without proper care and maintenance, it deteriorated until it was no longer playable.

Since then, I haven’t really had a piano of my own.

I’ve occasionally played whenever I happened to find one, and the circumstances felt appropriate. I remember playing the piano in my university’s lobby late at night, when there was hardly anyone around. I don’t even know if that piano is still there. More recently, I’ve played at a friend’s house. And I currently have a keyboard in my room in Bandung, which I use from time to time.

These days, I mostly play whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I try to make some music of my own, usually something closer to neo-soul or contemporary R&B. Other times, I try to revisit the classical pieces I once knew.

It’s a little sad, actually, how much I’ve forgotten. My fingers are stiff, my memory of the notes has faded, and I’m not even entirely sure if I can still read sheet music. Pieces I used to play almost effortlessly now feel unfamiliar. Sometimes I can remember the melody but not the notes, or my fingers seem to remember something that my mind has forgotten.

But every now and then, though, something comes back.

A familiar melody. A little passage from a nocturne. The opening of pieces I haven’t played in years.

I’ve made a little promise to myself that someday, when circumstances allow, I’ll buy a piano of my own. Hopefully a Steinway, although realistically, I’ll probably have to settle for something a little more affordable. I’ll start practicing again, properly this time, and slowly relearn the pieces I used to love, and learn some new pieces I’ve always wanted to play.

And one day, I want to learn to play Chopin’s Ballade No. 2.

Not because I have any intention of becoming a concert pianist anymore, or because I want to perform it in front of a large audience. I am no longer that little boy preparing for recitals, dreaming of conservatories and concert halls.

I’ll learn it because there’s someone I’d like to remember.

I just want to be able to sit at my own piano, play the piece from beginning to end, and think about that elderly man who used to ask me to play for him.

I wish I could tell you more about him. What kind of man he had been, what stories he liked to tell, what music his life was like when he was young. But the truth is, I don’t know.

What I do know is that he simply liked listening to me play the piano.

He didn’t know about the little boy who once dreamed of becoming a pianist, the years of lessons and practice, or the ambitions that had quietly faded away. He just asked me to play, and in doing so, reminded me of something I had almost forgotten: how wonderful it feels to share something you love with someone who genuinely enjoys it.

I used to dream of playing in the grandest concert halls in the world, in front of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. And I still think that would have been a wonderful life.

But of all the audiences I’ve ever played for, one of the people I remember most fondly was an old man resting quietly on his couch in the living room, asking me to play just one more piece.

And someday, when I finally learn that Ballade, I’ll play it for him.

Just a little later than I would’ve liked.