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Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that lives inside an abandoned school, and it isn’t empty at all—it’s waiting. I want you to close your eyes for just a moment and imagine the smell of chalk dust and old paper, and then hear the first note of a piano that no longer works. You know, I was thinking about this while walking past the old elementary school on the edge of town last week. It’s one of those buildings that time has simply forgotten, or perhaps decided to keep as a secret. The windows are boarded up with plywood that has long since turned gray and splintered, looking less like protection and more like scars. But inside, if you were brave enough to slip through a gap in the fence, there’s a music room. And in that room sits an upright piano, covered in a decade of dust, its keys yellowed like old teeth. It’s giving… existential, isn’t it? We often talk about art as something vibrant, something alive, something that demands our attention in concert halls or streaming services. But there is a profound beauty in art that has been left behind. There is a texture to abandonment that we rarely acknowledge because it makes us uncomfortable. It reminds us of our own impermanence. When I look at that piano, I don’t see a broken instrument. I see a vessel. I see a container for every song that was never finished, every practice session that ended in frustration, every lullaby hummed by a tired mother who couldn’t play a single correct chord. The building is silent, but the potential for sound is screaming. Let’s unpack that idea of perfection, because I think we’re obsessed with it. In our daily lives, we curate our feeds to show only the polished moments. The perfect smile, the perfect meal, the perfectly tuned guitar string. But what happens when the string breaks? What happens when the key sticks? Most people would walk away. They would say, 'It’s not worth it. It’s too much work. It’s broken.' But here is where the magic happens. Playing a piano that is slightly out of tune, or one that has a sticky key that refuses to return to its resting position, forces you to listen differently. You can’t rely on muscle memory alone. You have to engage with the instrument in real-time, negotiating with its flaws. You have to lean into the resistance. If a key is stiff, you press harder. If a note is flat, you adjust your timing. You stop trying to perform and start trying to connect. This feels so relevant to how we live our lives right now, doesn’t it? We are so afraid of being off-key, so afraid of making a mistake, that we refuse to play at all. We wait for the perfect conditions. We wait for the mood to be right, for the equipment to be new, for the audience to be applauding before we even strike a note. But the most honest music—the music that actually touches someone else’s soul—often comes from the struggle. It comes from the friction between your intention and the reality of the tool in your hands. I remember reading a letter from a young student in the 1950s, found tucked inside the cover of that very same piano years later. She wrote about her fear of recitals, about how she felt like everyone was watching her hands, judging every tremor. She didn’t write about the music itself; she wrote about the shame of not being good enough. That letter sat in the wood grain for forty years, invisible to everyone until someone finally opened the lid. When I imagine sitting down at that dusty bench, I feel a sudden, sharp ache in my chest. Because I know that child. I know that feeling of wanting to express something big and complex inside a small body that feels powerless. And I wonder if the piano heard her. Did the vibrations of her nervous humming travel through the wood? Did the strings resonate with her anxiety, holding space for feelings she couldn’t yet put into words? Art is never just about the object. It’s about the witness. Even when there is no audience, the act of creation is a dialogue. The piano listened. The walls listened. The dust settled around them like a blanket. Now, the piano is broken, yes. But the resonance remains. It’s a ghost story, in a way. Not a scary one, but a tender one. A reminder that nothing we create truly disappears. It just changes form. There’s a concept in jazz called 'playing the changes,' which means navigating the shifting chords of a song without losing your footing. Life is full of unexpected changes, isn’t it? One day you’re confident in your routine, and the next, everything shifts. Your plans fall apart. People leave. Dreams dissolve. How do you improvise when the sheet music is gone? Playing a broken piano teaches you improvisation in its purest form. You can’t follow the rules because the rules no longer apply to this instrument. You have to trust your ear. You have to trust your instinct. You might hit a dissonant chord, and instead of stopping, you lean into it. You make it intentional. You turn the mistake into a motif. This is such a vital skill for us as women, as creators, as human beings. We are taught to avoid mistakes, to apologize for taking up space, to smooth over the rough edges. But what if we leaned into the rough edges? What if we treated our stumbles not as failures, but as unique tonal qualities? A voice that cracks adds emotion. A painting with a tear in the canvas tells a story of survival. A life that looks messy on the outside might be harmonizing in ways we can’t yet see. The broken piano doesn’t ask for permission to make sound. It just makes whatever sound it can, and in doing so, it redefines what music is. And this brings me to you, the listener. Because a broken piano needs a listener just as much as a grand piano does. In fact, perhaps more so. When the music is perfect, we listen to the technique. When the music is imperfect, we listen to the humanity. We lean in closer. We care more. Think about the songs that have helped you through your darkest nights. Were they the polished pop hits with flawless production? Or were they the raw, acoustic tracks where you could hear the singer breathe, where you could hear the chair creak beneath their weight? We crave authenticity. We crave connection. We want to know that someone else has sat in the dark and tried to make sense of things. So I invite you to consider: where is your broken piano? Where is the thing in your life that feels unusable, unlovable, discarded? Maybe it’s a failed relationship. Maybe it’s a career path that led nowhere. Maybe it’s a part of yourself you’ve hidden away. Don’t throw it out. Sit down at it. Press the keys that stick. Listen to the dissonance. Find the melody hiding in the noise. Because that is where your true voice lives—not in the perfection, but in the repair. I want to challenge you this week. I want you to find one thing in your life that you’ve deemed 'broken' or 'finished' and give it five minutes of your attention. Just five minutes. Look at it. Touch it. Ask it what it wants to say. You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to make it useful again. You just have to acknowledge its existence. Maybe it’s an old journal with blank pages. Maybe it’s a garden plot overrun by weeds. Maybe it’s a conversation you had three years ago that still haunts you. Sit with it. Let it speak. You might be surprised by what you hear. You might realize that the 'brokenness' is actually a feature, not a bug. That the cracks are letting the light in, as Leonard Cohen said, but also letting the sound out. We are all composers of our own lives, even when the instruments fail us. Especially then. So let’s make some beautiful, messy, imperfect noise together. Let’s fill the empty rooms with our presence. Let’s prove that we are still here, still creating, still resonating. Stay curious, my friends. And please, keep listening. Thank you for sitting with me in the dust today. I’ll be back next week with another exploration of the stories hiding in plain sight. Until then, keep your ears open and your heart soft. Bye for now.