Marguerite

When you play an instrument short term memory is incredibly helpful for learning pieces. When you play piano and accompany five soloists at a time, learning nine pieces total between them, it’s an absolute necessity. My incredible lack of an ability to remember even the basics of things I just saw on a page hinders me every time I sit down at a piano.

I’ve read that the Greeks, or maybe it was the Romans, but my memory isn’t good enough to be sure, made mental models of buildings or places to remember things. They’d place each piece of information in a different part of the building. Every detail would be clearly imagined and associated with a different memory. That way, when they mentally toured these edifices each detail would remind them of something they were supposed to remember. And by walking through the superstructure to the place they “put” they memory, they would instinctively find it.

It’s funny. My hands are almost equally proficiant at playing piano. The left hand lags only a hair in technical ability. But I can’t do anything else with it. I tried bowling- right in the gutter after only a few feet. I’ve tried writing- two years olds have done better. I once ate with my left hand- the shirt I was wearing was ruined. I’ve even tried the simple task of drinking from a bottle of water with my left hand. I got soaked. It’s just this retarded gimp I unfortunately have attached to the end of my arm. If it weren’t for piano, I might as well just have a stump!

I’m sitting on the couch in my living room with my best friend, listening to Dave Douglas play jazz trumpet. This time last winter, I thought I’d be going to college at the Berklee College of Music for my freshman year of musical education. That never happened. I’d be playing with some of the world’s most innovative young jazz musicians in the world. In a week, I go back to University of Montana to finish my second semester as a piano performance and music composition and technology major. When I get there, I’m starting a jazz combo. No two ways about it.