Diane Harari - The Recital

 

It's September 2014. I'm sitting in a room with about 100 other people, and I'm about to do my first ever piano recital. A few months beforehand, I decided to take up piano lessons again. I hadn't actually had a lesson for 30 years, but I've always loved playing piano. I'm not particularly good at playing piano. I'm not terrible at it either. It's just something that I really enjoy, because I have to immerse myself in it, because I have to try very hard. So, it's one of the few times that I'm totally present in the moment and weird things can happen, like I can hear my kids talking to me, but apparently, I can't talk and play at the same time. So, I just can't possibly answer them until I get to the end bit and stuff. But I decided I was going to have some lessons just because I wanted to get better at doing some stuff. 

 

And years ago, when I first had lessons, it was all about scales and practice, and it was a really horrible experience. But this time around, I had a young teacher called Tim who was in his early 20s, and he used to come to my place and he never once asked me to do a scale and he didn't really care whether I practiced or not. He was really relaxed and just warmly encouraging. I felt that Tim kind of got me. We had a thing going on there. 

 

So, a few months into it, when he said to me, “Look, I'm having a piano recital for my students at the end of the year, and I'm just wondering if you'd like to be part of it.” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” And he said, “Look, a lot of the students are younger students, but there are some older students there as well.” And I said, “Look, that's not a problem. I'd love to do it.” And sensing that he had a live one there, he said, “Well, would you like to do two pieces?” And I'm like, “Yeah, not a problem.” 

 

So, I told some of my friends that I was doing this recital. And they all said to me, “Wow, you're so brave,” which I'm old enough to know is code for, “Are you completely out of your mind?” [audience laughter] But I thought, well, what can go wrong? I've got the music in front of me, I'll practice, it'll be fine. And sometimes you got to put yourself out there and just go for it. 

 

Unfortunately, the lead up to the recital was not quite what I'd hoped it would be, and things got ridiculously busy at work, and I had to travel and I was nowhere near a piano for the three weeks before the recital. And it was suboptimal preparation. But I was confident there on the day in September that I could just wing it. It would be fine, adrenaline would kick in and it'll all be good. 

 

And so, I rock up to the venue. It's this beautiful room in Melbourne University. It's this old building, built in 1888, and there's sunshine streaming in, and there's these stained-glass windows. I'm sitting there. I've got my son, Dylan, who was 11 at the time and he's sitting next to me as my wingman. We watch as everyone comes in. Tim had said that they were going to be younger students, but I figured that they were going to be high school students. Most of them were five or six. [audience laughter] I was wedged in between Three Blind Mice and Mary Had a Little Lamb. [audience laughter] But that was okay, because I figured this would really make me shine. [audience laughter] 

 

Anyhow, the kids get up and they start doing their pieces. Look, I don't want to be mean, but they're a bit ordinary. [audience laughter] But the audience was full of love. Like, they were clapping like nobody's business. It was fantastic how supportive they were being. And then, it was my turn to get up. And so, I get up there and I start playing. I'm still feeling really good. I get about five or six bars in, and I make this massive error. I just froze. I actually had no idea how to recover from this position. 

 

And that was when I noticed that all this light is streaming in, and it's flaring off the plastic pockets where my music's in. I can't possibly play in these conditions, and so I stop and I pull out the music and put it in front and start again, like an old person who has no embarrassment [unintelligible [00:29:25] [audience laughs] And I start playing. And the whole time, my head's just going, “Don't go too fast. Don't go too fast,” and so I play so ridiculously slowly that I've totally lost all my timing. And it's just appalling. Like, the whole thing is the worst experience of my entire life. I cannot wait till it's finally over. I get to the end of the piece and I'm like, “Thank God,” until I realized that there was a second one and I had to go through it all again. [audience laughter] 

 

I finish it and I'm like, “Oh, God, I just want to get back to my seat.” I've got to be fair, the audience were very warm with their applause. But by now, I knew that they were a really unreliable audience, because they had clapped little Johnny. And Johnny was shit ass, let's be honest. [audience laughter] And so, I get back to my seat, and Dil is sitting there and he looks at me, full of love, and he goes, “Oh, mum, you were great.” And for a moment, I really believed him, [audience laughter] until I recognized that he was using exactly the same voice that I use when he or his brother has done something completely lame. And the only thing between them and a shattered ego are the kind words that I've got to say. 

 

Now, the worst part of this story, is that I actually was so mortified that I stopped playing piano for five years. It was only a few months ago that I sat down again and I just thought to myself, what the hell was I thinking? I love playing piano. I've never wanted to perform. I just want to do it for me. I just want to do it as the background to what my kids are doing. It makes me happy and I'm pretty sure the dog enjoys it. [audience laughter] And that's it. Thank you.