The Odd Straw

Of course she had a piano, she told me when she called inquiring about lessons. In fact, she had two.

Diane had played as a child, but it had been many years. “I feel like I need something . . .” her voice trailed off. I waited. “I need to use my brain again,” she finally said.

She arrived for her first lesson dressed in Lululemon yoga clothes and trendy sneakers. She sported an expensive haircut, worn stylishly tousled, self-consciously walking the line between casual and high maintenance. Digging through her oversized designer purse, she couldn’t find her reading glasses. She dropped her wallet on the floor. She had forgotten to bring the notebook I had requested for assignments. She sat down awkwardly, pulling the piano bench too close to the keyboard. “It’s been a long time,” she said by way of apology.

“What work do you do?” I asked, searching for a place to begin.

“My husband is a surgeon,” she answered. “I have a son . . .” Once again, her voice trailed off, an aimless arrow falling to the ground and missing its mark. “I used to work in interior design, but . . .”

“Tell me what you want to learn,” I said. “What are you hoping to get out of piano lessons?”

“Liebesträume,” she responded quickly. “My mother used to play that.”

I began by teaching her some elementary exercises, major five-finger positions on all the white keys. We reviewed basic note-reading rules and she stumbled through a simple piece, her rhythmic skills clearly rusty or perhaps non-existent. I assigned several pages of short pieces from a beginning adult piano book and we worked through how to practice them.

“What about Liebesträume?” she asked. 

“Maybe next time,” I said.

Diane’s lessons were intermittent at best. In my studio, adults take lessons on an à la carte basis. They can schedule lessons as they want—every two weeks, every two months, whatever—but they pay a higher rate for the privilege. In turn, I can teach my adult students in a given week or not, depending upon my own schedule. With most adults, this arrangement works well. They like the convenience of being able to schedule piano lessons as they fit into their lives and generally arrive prepared and eager to learn. It is a win-win situation, as far as I am concerned. I teach adults who want to be there, instead of students who feel obligated to show up for a weekly lesson regardless of whether or not they have practiced. True, their musical progress is hardly linear; it ebbs and flows, mirroring their practice and lesson schedule at any time. Yet there is an honesty to this practice, for it naturally follows the contours of a mature life with all its distractions and complications.

But such an agreement was disastrous with Diane. Often she forgot to come, or equally often, forgot her wallet and couldn’t pay. She seemed not to understand that she should practice the pieces and exercises we had gone over in her lessons and would instead choose something from an old book of classical pieces she had found in her piano bench at home. “Oh,” she’d say, looking at her assignment notebook in confusion. “I forgot about the scales. I did practice this ‘Minuet,’” and she would proceed to fumble through the little Mozart piece, missing notes and rhythms. 

Many times, trying to find a way to connect our work in lessons with her practicing, I’d take the lead she offered and we’d practice together on the Mozart or whatever piece she’d attempted at home. I’d correct her wrong notes and rhythms, and we would take it apart bit by bit until she could play it slowly, but accurately.

“Why don’t you continue to practice this,” I’d suggest hopefully, “and we’ll look at again next time. By then you’ll be more comfortable with it.”

“What about Liebesträume?” she’d say.

Inevitably the path to the next lesson was jagged and indirect. She traveled often and missed months of lessons at a stretch. Holidays meant her college-age son was home and she’d forget about piano for a time. She injured herself riding her horse and cancelled three lessons in a row because of conflicts with physical therapy sessions. Once she showed up at my door unannounced. I hadn’t heard from her in weeks. “I thought I had a lesson today,” she said in response to my startled look.

Years went by. Some months Diane would take only a handful of lessons, some stretches she’d become almost regular in attendance. One summer, I didn’t teach any adult students, citing a busy performing schedule as my excuse. I thought she might disappear after that, but in August I got an email inquiring about lessons for the fall. I often asked myself why I put up with Diane. Not only was she sporadic in attendance and commitment, but she was forever substituting my assignments with her own. From time to time, she’d drag in Liebesträume, having painstakingly worked out the first few lines.

In every conventional sense, Diane’s piano lessons were a failure. In part, I blamed our lack of basic connection. She and her husband lived on a ranch with horses and dogs. They went to France on a whim for Thanksgiving. They kept a boat in Santa Barbara. She attended a Bible study every Monday afternoon and had a weekly facial appointment. In her presence, I was all too aware of my shabby couch, the homeless people who walked past my house, the piles of books and music stacked precariously on the piano and the coffee table. (“You read,” she said once. “Uh, yes,” I stammered in response.)

But I had experienced this kind of disconnection with other students, with varying degrees of success. Still, Diane and I couldn’t find common ground.

Then one December afternoon, I played through a simple Christmas carol in her lesson. It was a four-part hymn version of Silent Night, not even an interesting piano arrangement. I turned to see Diane in tears. “That was so beautiful,” she said. “It makes me think of my mother.”

Suddenly it all became clear. Diane had no real musical aspirations of her own. She simply wanted, from time to time, to be in the presence of something that reminded her of her mother. This journey into piano lessons was sentimental and perhaps only that.

This insight gave me compassion, but not patience. While her poor attendance at lessons meant she demanded little real time or energy, I had students waiting for spots in the studio that I was forced to turn away. Yes, she paid for these missed lessons, but I was a teacher and there was little teaching with Diane. I dreaded our time together, always wondering if she’d even show up or if she’d once again forget her lesson fee and force me into uncomfortable reminders to mail her payment.

Finally, I claimed another busy summer with no time for adult students. I said that she was happy to contact me again the fall, but I could make no promises about what my schedule would look like. “You know, I really love the piano,” she told me. I nodded and smiled. She walked out, and I never heard from her again.

I wasn’t sorry, but still, I felt conflicted. Maybe she had gotten what she wanted from piano lessons or simply became distracted by something else in her life. The latter seemed possible, given her general lack of attention to commitments and appointments. But I had failed and I knew it. I wasn’t proud of the time we had spent together, however productive I had tried to make it. I didn’t want to claim Diane as a student, for she didn’t represent me well. Feeling a bit ashamed of myself, I let her go with relief.

Even so, Diane had struck a nerve and I wasn’t sure why. Looking around my studio of students, over and over again, I could find the same profile repeating itself like a musical motif: both older and younger students who were hard-working and curious in their musical interests, students who were engaged with practicing and willing for me to lead them on a ride through the piano world. These students were easy to teach. These students did not keep me up at night, gnawing at a vague uneasiness.

While repeatedly, we find that like attracts like, I question the tendency to teach only students who think and behave like we do. Some of my best and worst teaching moments have been inspired by students who mystified and frustrated me. For years, I raged against one older transfer student who was non-communicative and, in my eyes, somewhat passive-aggressive. She would not answer my questions or respond to my instructions, and yet, mysteriously, she seemed to want to be there, putting in regular and lengthy practice hours between lessons. Another student repeatedly asked to play expressive Romantic pieces but performed with such stiffness and inhibition it was painful. Sometimes, working on Chopin or Brahms with her, I’d get so frustrated by her rigidity that it was all I could do not to shake her. Whether or not I like it, it is always these students that challenge me, shaking me out of my complacency and smug attitude about my own success. These students require me to dig deep within for patience and compassion. These students test both my commitment and my detachment simultaneously. Spiritual teachers come in many forms.

But there is another side of this to consider: perhaps a lack of connection between a teacher and a student is a sign worth listening to. Once a colleague came to the studio wanting to observe an afternoon of lessons. It was telling that the lesson my colleague was most motivated and challenged by was not one of the good lessons she observed: the lessons with the lively first-year students who were engaged and were becoming solid pianists and creative thinkers. Or the lessons with the committed advanced students who were doing admirable work on challenging repertoire. No, instead the lesson that stimulated her the most was my “bad” lesson of the afternoon. The student I most dreaded and often wanted to strangle because I found her uncooperative and puzzling. And she had sloppy practice habits to boot. All my favorite teaching moments talking about good practice habits and strategies were lost on her because 1) she would hardly engage with me and 2) she didn’t seem interested in rigorous and disciplined work. Yet, on some level, it was this student that my friend most related and sympathized with, and she overflowed with many insightful and interesting suggestions. After several days of thinking about her ideas, I suddenly realized something: This was a student she ought to be teaching, not me. It wasn’t that the student was wasting my time (although that’s how I liked to think about it). It was that I was wasting hers, by not releasing her to find a teacher with whom she might work with better.

The bottom line is that we don’t always know why particular students appear at our doors. We don’t have perfect vision into another’s motivation or inspiration. We don’t know why some people are drawn to certain composers or styles regardless of talent or aptitude, or are motivated to seek out music lessons in the first place. We can’t always understand another’s reluctance to engage in conversation or to follow instructions or to perform certain tasks. It’s complicated. There are no clear answers as to when to perservere or when to give up. We grasp at straws, and often find ourselves, over and over again, drawing the odd one.

You know, I really love the piano, Diane had said at the end of our last lesson together. I’d like to think I might have contributed to this passion in some tangible way, but I don’t know. Still, I believe her.