October 2019
A few weeks ago, I pulled out one of my old piano scores:
”The Italian Concerto” by J.S. Bach
It's a piece I played for my Eastman audition, a piece I knew almost backward and forward at the time. I've come back to it at various points in my career when I want to reconnect to the art or remember why I started.
I was thumbing through the pages one night after dinner, admiring all the markings my teacher added into the score—a different colored pen for every lesson. I stumbled through the first reading, my fingers stiff, struggling to remember how the notes go.
But then, something surprising happened.
After a few read-throughs, I found myself playing a 16-bar section from memory, fingers gliding over the keys, my mind filling in the notes as I went.
Sometimes, we discover that something we thought was lost has been there all along.
In his book, How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens*, Benedict Carey wrote:
“No memory is ever 'lost' in the sense that it’s faded away, that it’s gone. Rather, it is not currently accessible . . . . The harder your brain has to work to dig out a memory, the greater the increase in learning.”
Fascinating, right?
It made me start to think: What parts of ourselves have been lost or forgotten over the years? What things—dreams, skills, pieces of our identity—have we buried in various seasons of our lives?
Maybe you’ll find this month, like I did, that something you thought was lost has been there all along. 💛
*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
