Hidemi's Rambling No.279

My younger sister joined with me in taking piano lessons at the pianist’s house years later. While I didn’t practice, my sister was a diligent student who practiced earnestly. Still, I was the one whom the pianist raved about in the lessons. He was an elderly man and often danced to the piece I was playing falteringly. My sister played fluently on the other hand, but he once slapped her hands while she was playing. He shouted ‘It’s not like that at all!’ as if he couldn’t take her playing anymore. To me, it seemed she played much better than I did, but to him, she didn’t. He held a students’ performance once a year at a concert hall. He picked a piece for a student to play there according to their skill. Because I didn’t practice, my skill had progressed extremely slowly over the years. Even though he had admired my hidden ability, he couldn’t pick a piece for me that required high skill. I played an easy piece that a grade school student could play when I was already a teenager. I couldn’t live up to his high expectations toward me and quit. Eventually, I started writing songs and chose music for my career. Since the pianist also composed music and made sound with a synthesizer, I thought I could learn it form him and visited his house for the first time in years. In the rich residential area, only his gorgeous mansion had disappeared and nothing remained of the house but the empty lot there. I wondered if the place had really existed in the past…