JUST LIKE MY THREE SISTERS BEFORE ME, as a kid I learned to play the piano. But, unlike my more musically talented siblings, I stalled at beginner level. I never made it through grade one.
For years I longed to return to piano lessons, and I even went so far as to purchase a beautiful, secondhand piano that three, semi-hulking firefighters struggled to push through our garage, up a stubby flight of stairs and into the house. Immediately, I sat down and replayed songs I’d memorized in my youth.
In short order, I bought a piano book filled with Christmas carols and a new version of the one I’d played from in my youth, but after several years of plucking half-heartedly at learning new songs, we donated it to a local high school. I understood that I would never learn to play past my current level of inexpertise. The realization was as grim as knowing that my son did not have any interest in learning to play, any more than I did.
I packed away the music books and the sheet music with notes and lyrics in my own handwriting along with twenty years of unrealized musical desire.
At some point, I stopped beating myself up and what I believed was my stumbling block: a lack of stick-to-it-ness; I have a healthy amount of tenacity. Because if music is, in fact, math-based, my inability to master those beautiful, ear-pleasing ebony and ivory keys is easily explained.
I am terrible at math. I mean, I really struggle with even the basics. On the flip side, the language portion of my brain works overtime, and if I were to undergo an MRI, I am certain that it would glow red-hot, whereas, the portion of grey matter that computes giz-intas (as in 3 giz-inta 9 three times), would display as burned-out nub of coal.
Math, or rather, teenagers struggle with math, is often a topic of conversation among parents in our hockey circle. At the minor-midget year, those looking for university scholarships (and university entrance in general), are pre-occupied with math grades.
I maintain, as I always have, in Ontario the public school system focuses too heavily on academics. With parents following this lead. We buy into the academics before arts argument, say nothing of the athletically gifted, or even athletically-inclined kids? The marginalization of athletic and artistic types in favour of “good” student follows us into adulthood. Even at my age, co-workers and peers deride me for my lack of mathematical prowess, as if I am somehow deficient. Equally, I have heard parents comment derisively about their children’s peers who find math a difficult and frustrating subject in school.
A while back, I watched a piece on a news program that showed North American school children giving up on time mathematical problems when their Asian counterparts worked to solve the same equations until they were stopped. It was fascinating to me to see myself in the experiment. For sure, I belong in the group who gave up. I would’ve been bored early on because for me, the challenge would not be an interesting one; however, I am able to spend hours trying to get the line of a poem just right. I can fiddle with a paragraph, or the design of a document, for five hours straight without breaks.
In my day job, I’ve come to see some people see music in computer code. To them, “—” reads like music: a staff bar, a treble clef, a sharp, four notes. It’s not the jumble of notes and irreconcilable quarter beats that I struggle with. In understanding that, I’ve let myself off the hook. To me, language is lyrical. And while tenacity may be involved in solving mathematical equations, I prefer to use my tenacity to work through prosaic problems.