Music is one of the best things that can happen to a person. There's something about working out a rhythm that you haven't seen before, or hearing something you're playing sound funny and realizing what you did wrong and that you're good enough to KNOW you did something wrong, or being almost dizzy with lack of breath because you're going so slowly, but playing it all right, or trying it a little faster and playing flawlessly, or playing it so fast that you don't have time to think and can barely get your fingers through a few of the fingerings but realizing that you don't HAVE to think because your fingers know this song better than you do and you've practiced it to perfection, or being so nervous because you've worked on this song forever but all the PEOPLE, all listening to you and only one piano accompament to hide a mistake, or hearing them clap and knowing you did horribly but nobody's rude enough to tell you--but maybe, just maybe, you did do all right, especially for your first recital, and especially for someone shy, and it wasn't so bad because your music needed your attention, or later at home playing it over again and knowing that YOU can make this, you can understand it, you've learned something else as important as reading words, English words, was, something like reading, as magical, you've found out that reading has an equal, but the music is special in its own way, and that now you have another treasure to add to those things you'll always have and no one can take away: your learnings, your knowings. You have music now.
