My piano has always been a source of refuge to me. That, and my brother. My brother is autistic you see, and his heart is purer than finest gold. He sits on his bed with his pair of heavy glasses from having read too much, and I share his space and his energy - an energy where nothing is expected of me and I exist in the moment as me, Sarah, his big sister, with a petite stature and unwieldy mind.
I've always liked C major. I play it a lot on the piano. Quite ironic, given the unwieldy mind, but C major, in it all its simplicity strikes me as a chord that is easy, effortless, but beautiful. I create melodies with C major - they are not technically challenging but when I play them, I am reminded how beautiful the world is even with minimal effort.
I live day to day with impulsivity. I am rubbish at planning because to me, nothing beats the wind in your hair, or a glance into a cloudy blue sky on a windy day. The best things in life aren't planned, they just exist, which is why I love my brother so dearly.
He reminds me that it is okay to just exist.
It is okay to be a human made for another world, with a reading hobby that totally makes him - it makes the facts in his head and the history-cyclopedia within him shine through in all its radiance.
The melodies I play are simple, but they always feel multi-layered. In my adolescent years, I played when I was in tears, when I was in love, when sleep did not come easy, when I was heartbroken, when I was alone, when no one was there to be with me.
It was a foreign concept to me that a performer would play a concerto and respond in glee to applause and standing ovations because to me, I identified as a piano player, not as a piano performer.
The piano housed my tears, it carried me through my darkest times, it absorbed my emotions; and with the tunes I played on it, it laughed and it bled with me. Music was so ingrained in me I would be playing at 2am when my parents were asleep, with my foot on the una corda pedal so as not to wake them.
I cherished my piano so much I would often play it away from fanfare.
It is a shame that society rewards not the depth and passion of a piano player (as opposed to a piano performer), or autism spectrums when they are and could be so very special.
Very few things in life move me like these and this post is a tribute to all of those people, lives and beings who live unrecognised in their own, simple world; those who make the world beautiful simply by existing.
This post is a tribute to my brother - for all the comfort you bring, for all the lives you touch, for the little piece of heaven you have brought into our family.
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