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It can be very difficult to suffer through depression. It can be so difficult that even getting up the oomph to play piano can seem like an insurmountable task. I’ve just come through a circumstantial depression that affects many other health problems, and I’d like to relate how depression can affect music and the playing of the piano.
To see the large looming silent beast crouching poorly against the wall, trying to be inconspicuous makes you feel uneasy. It’s looking at you from behind it’s keys, stalking you. It’s after your hands, in a way that hurts you. It’s preying upon your mood as it hangs in your peripheral vision. You remember the sounds it used to make when it was happy, sad or angry. Now it’s silent, but with such an absolute deafening linger in your ears, eyes and soul. It’s haunting you. Its taunting you. It’s hunting you. Its begging and pleading.
To feel the desire to hide so overwhelming, but yet your soul has heard the cries of your soul speaking for your stringed friend. You want to remember the friendship, the love affair, the passion and the pain it gave you.
As time goes on and you feel yourself slipping you succumb to the beast and heave your weighted feet towards it. The addiction you have for it’s companionship calls you against your conscious will, yet all the while your subconscious secret self looses it’s grasp on the self imposed exile from life and slips you into the seat of illicit love and selfish greediness and the want to caress your lovers keys.
The first gentle touches brings an offering in the way of a reward, a sound of memories of better times, and of happier days when you shared a bond of strength and partnership. Your body relaxes with every note you play, and all of a sudden you can feel again. After a length of barren, desert-like emotions, you come across that oasis you needed to feed your dry soul, and fill you with the waters of soothing and invigorating music.
How could you have spent so much time punishing yourself and refuse the affections of your music? How could you ignore the lover in your home, the passionate but quiet listener who has never hated you nor caused you any harm?
It’s so very difficult to endure a depression. To get over the mental block that we create in our minds can be likened to climbing a mountain only to have to walk endless, unknown miles to getting well and allowing ourselves to feel again. I guess the numbness we hide in can make us intentionally, and willingly hate ourselves and lose, in our minds, the right to enjoy and love music. The punishments that are self imposed can be undone. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me I can’t go without it. Playing my piano is my drug. It’s my happy place, it’s my addiction and my weakness. I can’t say no, and I can’t tell it to f*** off without the guilt remorse and shame making me weep inside to the point that I pray for the strength to recover, and feed my addiction again. ( I know, completely contradictory to the norm, but it’s not mind altering to the point you can’t drive. It gives one the ability to live a stable life and to cope with all of the pressures we have to encounter in daily life, as opposed to a simple existence that so many others have without the creating music, or so it seems.)
The therapy of a creative outlet, whether by favourite pieces by famous composers, or our own personal creations. All of it can swaddle our inner child, our inner secret vulnerable self and give us a shield to cope with the next day’s onslaught of negativity. I thank God every day for my musical abilities and the joy and relief they bring to me every day.
I went through a dry spell, but I have again gotten drunk on the intoxicating sounds of my best friend, confidant, lover, and therapist. Of all the ways I can self medicate I think my poison of choice being my piano was the best addiction I could develop.
I hope this has given you a brief look into the mind of a tortured soul and how music can help me to get through my life with seeming normality. I hope that if you identify with my story that you allow yourself the musical drug of music and give your fingers the fix they crave to play music so you can heal and return to the land of the living. Never let your music or your love for it die, lest you fall.
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Broccoli
glad you are back at it :-)
I wouldn’t call it an addiction but, a solace, health source and sanity. (That in the frame work of trying to be very positive in life)
I have dragged myself out of multiple downs and depressions, always very hard. Hang onto your piano, and take care.
I’ve in my 5th year of sobreity so I think my idea of addiction might be different than yours. I can understand why the idea of my piano being an addiction can seem negative, but addicts of all kinds do what’s called, "self medicating." My idea of an addiction can have meaning of "I cannot live without it." I feel withdrawal when i go longer than a few days without playing. It’s not unusual for an addict to replace one addiction with another I like the fact that this addiction i feel towards my playing is a healthy one. I’m sure it would be highly debated by others, but this is how my brain processes my addictive behaviour. I’ll never not be an addict, but I choose not to use chemicals or harmful behaviours to feed it. I like that my music is my obsession at times, as the medicating it gives is soothing and proven as an emotional salve.
Thank you for your positive encouragement, and I hope I was able to help un-muddle my view of my "addiction" to my piano.
I was a heavy smoker for years, so I get the once an addict always an addict…:-). I agree that a piano and music is certainly a positive kind of addiction, and if one has to be addicted, you probably couldn’t do better than this :-)
It sometimes takes a backwards and upside-down perspective, as it totally goes against the norm, but yes of all the addictions better it than something else.
I’m so grateful I have my music, guitar, piano, and vocal because these replace the substances that actually block the creative process. When I came out of my fog 5.5 years ago, it was music that first came back to me. It had been missing.
I also know that music is an addiction, because when my hands hurt too much to play my guitar and I knew that i still could play piano I literally cried, and was devastated that I didn’t have one. I hurt and was angry and was craving the ability to play whenever I liked. When I went to AA and they told me that I needed to rely on my "higher power" and He’d take care of me. Well, I did, and I got my piano and at zero cost to me.
I guess God wanted me to have this "fix" as much as I did. LOL.
You make me want to hug you :-)
I wish you the best and lots of it!
Hugs are good, not enough people hug anymore. All of my "real-life" friends hug. We need it. Have one back :)
I have very similar periods of numbness, Broccoli. As a child I used to play the piano keys wherever I found a piano. I could never tire of it! As we couldn’t afford a piano I bought a guitar. Years later I bought a piano and had a few lessons. Unfortunately my education interfered and I stopped learning piano - the worst decision of my life.
Nevertheless,as I always had melodies in my head - mine and other peoples.’I also re-developed a sort of addiction to the piano. Sometimes after not having touched the piano for ages I sit down and just play and play anything which comes into my head. But in between it is just as you say: you suffer and punish yourself, ignoring the
wonderful person who can make you feel again.
I’m not sure that my love of the piano is as strong as it was or it might be that my depression is worse than ever and I am unable to let go for long periods.
You write so powerfully and openly about your relationship with your piano. Your depth of experience and evocative writing will help me as
I have buried a lot of my feelings over and over till numbness has taken over.
Thanks,Broccoli for letting us into your soul
Ikey
Hi,
I really related, please write me back, I want to discuss this. I really really identified with what you wrote. Please write back!
Helen
Hi Helen,
I think you are responding to what Brocccoli wrote as it’s inspiring stuff. Perhaps you could relate your own feelings and experience as
it would make it easier to respond to you.
Ikey
Hi Helen,
Go to my profile as there is a way to private message me. It would probably be more prudent for you to discuss this type of thing without the entire world watching. If you’d like to open up publicly for the benefit of others, that’s great as well. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It lessens your anonymity online, though. However you choose, I’m fine with it. Anything you write here shows up on the website’s list of recent posts, though.
I hope to hear from you soon, Helen.
Best wishes,
~B~
Helen, there is a link to my profile at the very top of the blog post.
~B~