Ostinato

I’ve been playing the piano for nearly 15 years. In that time, I took lessons off and on from 3 different teachers. They led me through many music books and thirty-minute lessons with unending patience. Oh, what patience it must have taken.

You see, I was afflicted with the age-old woe of music students. I didn’t want to practice. My teachers helped me make charts to track my practice time each week. They let me decorate the charts. They gave me stickers to mark the days. The goals were gradually reduced. 30 minutes… 20 minutes… 15… play at least one of the songs at home. Nothing seemed to work. I simply didn’t practice.

One of the things I remember learning about in the rocky course of piano lessons was ostinato, Italian for obstinate. It refers to a pattern of notes that repeats over and over throughout the song, often in the bass range.

Ostinato is a good way to sum up my piano playing past. Obstinate is an understatement of my refusal to practice. And just like a powerful jazz riff, that stubbornness underscored every lesson with every teacher and eventually led to my giving up lessons altogether.

But, that same obstinance eventually reversed itself. I wanted to play the piano well, due in part to my infatuation with the jazz scores from Peanuts. And what I wanted; I would do. Free of the rankling oppression (as young Lindsay had seen it) of weekly lessons and practice charts, I applied myself to my practice with fervor. Sure, it came it fits and starts, but I was determined. I would pick a piece I wanted to learn and pound discordantly away until it started to take shape under my fingers. For once in my life, I willingly played one or two bars over and over—first right hand, then left, slowly, then faster.

As I practiced, I found another ostinato. This one wasn’t my own strong will, it was something else, persisting quietly through the years. My teachers’ admonitions came back to me. Bits of theory from lesson books resurfaced. Somehow, even when it seemed I didn’t pay attention or take things seriously, I’d been absorbing a low ostinato of influence. I just couldn’t see it until I tried things on my own.

This is why it’s important to teach and invest in kids, even when they don’t seem to care, even when they beg to be left on their own and you finally give in. The ostinato of life is the blend of our own dogged perseverance and the unrelenting soundtrack of those that care about us, encourage us, support us, and teach us. It is through independence that we learn who we needed all along.