Piano Playing as an Analogy For .. Like ... Everything

New blog post!
Yay!
Be excited!
Actually, I looked, and I do have over 2000 page views.  Which is like not really much of anything, since it's mostly probably random Google searches.  They would have to be very specific searches ...
Anyway, I haven't written in forever.  I think I'm writing more for me right now, than anything.  Got a few thoughts I wanna inscribe in the Internet before they disappear in the .... <insert creative analogy here> .... of time.
  But today I don't wanna write about Asperger's or religion very directly, although I'm sure they both influence everything I write, because they are both very much a part of my life.  I wanna write about the piano.  I'm at college now, working on a Biomedical Engineering degree, and pianos access on campus is rather limited.  So since I can't play the piano on a very regular basis, I am writing about instead.
  Time to get all touchy feely for a second - this is all about piano, just trust me.
  Recently in my life I've felt kind of stuck.  I feel like I've been progressing a lot in worldly knowledge, but maybe not so much as an individual.  Which (welp, here comes religion already) isn't really good, because I'm going on a mission this summer, and I should be like all fired up about the gospel, and learning a ton, and memorizing scriptures, and going out tracting with the missionaries, and handing out copies of the Book of Mormon (not Books of Mormon or Book of Mormons ... THE Book of Mormon was inscribed in gold plates, we've just got copies ... ), standing on the sidewalk corners crying repentance to all of campus, etc.  Well, maybe the last one was a little far, but still.  I'm doing a little, but just not enough.  And ... (okay, here comes the Asperger's already) ... well, being at an engineering school, being an Aspie is much more ... normal.  There are lots of us here.  It's a lot easier to just sit around and study or watch Stargate instead of actually going out and improving my social skills.  I feel like not only have I not progressed in that area, I've digressed a little bit.  I have friends that I talk to and spend time with a bit, but I feel myself kinda scared of and resisting new friendships, and just being happy with the few good friends I have.  Haven't decided if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet.  I guess just because it's an Asperger's thing doesn't make it a bad thing.  
  Goodness.  Well, that totally started going a direction I wasn't planning on.  Redirecting ...
  So piano.
  I remember a few months ago watching a home video, which took plays a few days after I learned my first song on piano, which, no surprise, was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  Not the fancy Mozart version, just one note at a time.  I plucked the keys carefully, slightly out of time, not holding the notes long enough.  It sounded choppy and stiff and not all that great.  But I was like six.  I was very proud of myself.
  A few years later, while I was still homeschooled, Mom, in her infinite wisdom, decided we should do half an hour of music related activity every day as part of our curriculum.  I didn't know what else to do, so I sat down and kept teaching myself piano.  Then one day I got to where I had to learn the bass cleft.  And play two hand simultaneously.  So I left the piano for a while.
  Seeing any life lessons creeping in here yet?  I'm not going to point them all out explicitly.  The piano, and music in general, is chock full of them.
  Anyway, I don't remember when I quit playing ... perhaps it was before Mom put music into our curriculum.  But I remember being discouraged because my younger brother was playing better than I was, and I had put more time into it than (or at least started before) he had.  I think at that time I did a bit of recorder playing, maybe harmonica.  The piano is way cooler than both, though.
  Eventually I got back to it.  It took a lot of time and effort, but I learned the bass cleft.  I could play two handed cords, pass a movement from one hand to the other and back again, play two different rhythms ... these were exciting times.  Instead of playing the stupid songs in the piano course books, I could sit down with a book of sheet music and start slowly, carefully, learning a real, full fledged, song.  After hours of practice, and the help of the sustain pedal, I could actually play a full length piano piece through.  And it started to kinda sound good!
  But there was soooo much more.  Anything with more than two sharps, and I was toast.  But that was fine, there were plenty songs  at my level.  
  One day I was playing from The Phantom of the Opera songbook.  I was playing Music of the Night ... a very calm, slow, relaxing, kinda creepy, and romantic song.  But I didn't see it like that.  It was four beats a measure, one count to a quarter note.  I hit the notes when they needed to be hit, trying hard to keep the tempo exact and steady.  It was very patterned.  Very mathematical.  Very ... Asperger's - y.  Dad came up and was like, "Hey, this is a very emotional song, you should put some feeling into it!"  And I was like, "What?"  And he was like, "Slow it down a little bit, try to feel it!"  (That's not exactly how it all went, but something like that).  So I did.  I kinda opened up my heart to the piano, let it spill out through my fingers onto the keys.  And all of the sudden it wasn't just notes stuck into a melody, it was music.  And that, my friends, is why I recommend music to anyone with a developmental disorder, especially an Autism spectrum one.  It is a astonishingly excellent way to open up the the right brain (recognizing faces, emotions, intuition, creativity, and pretty much everything not-Aperger's) and directly melding it with the left brain (logic, numbers, reasoning, and pretty much everything Asperger's).  I really believe his bridge between logic and patterns and creativity and emotion helped open the locked parts of my mind that Asperger's cleverly hid away.  
  Any who, back to life lessons.
  I realized no matter how much time I spent playing the piano, some songs on the shelf will still over my head.  No matter how much I practiced, I always found music that was too hard.  And I always knew people who could play better than I.  But I played a bit in church, and I loved that.  I had people tell me I played with my heart, which was wonderful to hear, considering my heart is (or was, at least) naturally a rather hidden and obscure place.  It gave me a way to express myself in ways words couldn't.  And I still sometimes do.  I'm all like, 'I feel kinda down, but I can't explain it' and then I'm all like, 'I really feel like this song'.  And I realized that was the important thing. Not how good I was at it, not how many people could play better than I could, but that I played.  And I loved it.  And when I played, it was ME playing.  
  And that's really how life goes.
  No matter where you are at, there is always someone better. No matter how much you try, you will always be less than you think you should be.  But no matter where you are, you have a place, and a purpose.  All you have to do is open up your heart to the world, open up to God, and give yourself up, whoever you may be.  And now matter how much you think there isn't a place for you, there is.
  Which is to say, no matter how much I think there isn't a place for me, there is.
  Sitting around thinking "Gosh, I wish I could play this song" doesn't do any good.  Sitting around and thinking "Hey, I can almost play this song, I'm gonna work on it", and then actually doing it ... now that's actually kind of useful.  
  Another funny thing to note is that you really tend to notice more mistakes and wrong notes than anyone listening does.  I've finished songs and thought "I totally botched that", when other people tell me, "That was great!  I didn't hear anything wrong!"
  People always say (well, not always, but you know what I mean) that you should leave the past behind you and never look back.  Well, that isn't totally true.  When I'm frustrated with a piano piece and feel like I'm just not getting anywhere, I look back at the first time I started playing Phantom of the Opera, and how choppy and difficult it was, but yet how easy it is to me now, and how much I've improved, and how if I've really improved that much, I'm sure I can go further.  When I looked back when I first started public school and how I was content sitting by myself at lunch doing Algebra or sitting in the corner building paper airplanes at a church party, and then at my first dances how scared I was and how stupid I sounded talking to the girls and how I wouldn't smile and I couldn't carry on a decent conversation and how I was deathly scared of large crowds, I realize the simple facts that ultimately I would rather be out around people or cheering in a crowd at a basketball game or hanging out with friends than entertaining myself with puzzles in my dorm room, or that I can leave a dance without feeling like a complete loser for days afterward, and that I can actually carry on a decent conversation with someone I barely know without them ever suspecting in the slightest I'm not neurotypical ... mean a lot.  Those were very long, grammatically butchered sentences.  But by looking back and seeing how far I've come, I realize, with more practice, I can continue to work toward who I want to be.  Not by focusing on my weaknesses, but by seeing my strengths, and pushing my weakness in that direction.  Someday, however difficult and scary it may seem, I will ask a girl out, and one day get married to an eternal companion.  Someday, no matter how difficult and scary it may seem, I will hold leadership roles in the church, and I will fulfill them.  Soon, no matter how difficult and scary it may seem, I will go knocking on random (but not really random) peoples' doors, sharing with them a message that could bring them eternal happiness.  These would really seem impossible, but I know how far I've come.  I just have to keep moving.  Keep practicing.  Keep playing that wonderful music that is life, and really only is life when you open up your heart and share it with the world.  
  And remember: there is always a piano piece you can't play ... yet.
~Scotty~

<once agan, i Refuse to profread.  Please excuce any tipos.  Or let me know and I will fix them, whutevs)