The Story Behind ‘The Pianist’
The Bombay Literary Magazine recently published three of my poems, among which is a deeply personal poem entitled “The Pianist.” While poetry merits an ability to exist within its own sphere (and there are those who believe that poetry ought not be explained), I’m hoping to provide context behind the poem 1, for friends who aren’t poets and puzzle over poetry and 2, to raise awareness on domestic violence. For me, poetry is a medium through which trauma, reconciliation, and healing emerge. I will be quoting excerpts of the poem in this article; my humble request is to read “The Pianist” after this paragraph and keep a separate tab open to reference the poem with ease.
During a session by Nitoo Das with The Quarantine Train, she spoke about themes including home, notalgia, the body as home, home as privilege, and home as it exists within socio-cultural and political spheres. The session left a very deep impression on me.
Nostalgia and home are two words I don’t mix. As someone who’s cut off all ties to my abusive ex-family, legally changed my name, and have started life completely anew, I don’t have a physical home. I have a suitcase, a backpack, and generous friends in the US who are willing to hold onto some of my stuff. The abstract notion of home is something I will spend a lifetime seeking. But in the process of writing my memoir, I’ve been able to process additional trauma I’ve not been able to confront and alongside Das’ session, I realized there are aspects about the place I grew up in that I have come to miss: fresh blueberries, pecans, honeysuckle, cucumbers, wild cherries and blackberries; my high school theatre; deep fried food and heirloom black eyed peas, as well as the sound of the piano.
After the session, I sat down and wrote poetry for perhaps six hours (thanks, insomnia) and among the upheaval of content was this poem which I had originally entitled 家丑不可外扬 “Family ugliness ought not be aired in public.” When I reviewed the March poetry prompt for The Quarantine Train, to write an illusion, I typed up this poem, broke it into stanzas, fixed some typos, and changed the title to “The Pianist.” What greater illusion can exist than having a home when ‘home’ wanted you dead?
It was to my great shock and pleasure when my poem was selected for The Quarantine Train’s critiquing session. While I knew I would benefit greatly from the session, I also feared the vulnerability that would emerge. Only some close friends in the group knew I had run away from my abusive family. I don’t just want to be viewed as the abuse victim/survivor. Even well meaning friends assume that all I write about is trauma (and though most of my publications do center around this, I don’t want to be tokenized into this trauma writer/activist poet, because there’s so much more I write). Furthermore, “The Pianist” is the first poem I’ve shared that I’ve written about my ex-mother.
The gracious feedback, insight, and edits offered during the critiquing session have allowed “The Pianist” to take its polished form. I am indebted to all those who attended and gave me such warm support.
When I read the poem aloud, my throat clamped shut and my jaw bore down on itself — these coping skills emerged to keep me silent and alive as a child and even reading aloud the poem, accessing and sharing these memories, invoked a deeply physical response. By breathing deeply, from the diaphragm, I reminded myself that I was within safe company and I would benefit immensely from their insight.
During the critiquing session, a poet commented “this line itself is very poetic” in reference to the first stanza’s last line. I frowned. Was he lying? Was he pretending to be nice? Did everyone all secretly think this was a terrible poem? My questions and doubts had manifested because of an incident from bullies in fifth grade. During a music class, our teacher asked what we thought about an excerpt of music she played. I raised my hand and said, “the flute felt like floating on a cloud.” And that line had brought forth relentless teasing and bullying from two girls. They laughed during music class then taunted me with renditions of “flutes can’t float” and “that’s so stupid” for weeks afterwards. The bullying only intensified. So, I had felt shame for the sentence and prayed to an unresponsive god that if only I could only go back in time and never have raised my hand. I learned to fear my own voice.
But upon hearing a fellow poet’s compliment, a peace I hadn’t realized I was searching for emerged: this had likely been the first line of poetry I ever wrote. A line I had spoken aloud and been so ashamed of for over fifteen years wasn’t just silly and stupid and ridiculous — it was a simile before I knew what literary devices were. And having understood more about the cycles of bullying and abuse, I know now that nothing I did would ever warrant violence from another person — neither in words nor in actions. It was an immensely healing moment for me.
The second stanza notates my spiral from the bullies at school as well as the abuse at home. The safest way to stay alive was to keep silent. Even writing was dangerous, so “I tucked infatuation to soar safely / alongside daymares kept under lock and key, / threaded through the bodies battered by a butterfly / shaped hole-puncher.” Though I hand wrote a novel each year from sixth to twelfth grade, I didn’t share the work. I kept it under lock and key.
The third stanza invokes the longing of a child to be loved. For having a mother who never hugged me, never told me she loved me, and who would push or slap me away, lying in the living room listening to the piano was the closest to love I could experience. Yet, even the piano is not exempt from violence. After my mother split my head open once, I was chastised for crying; yet, I was blamed for many years for inserting a small, paper coin into the piano when I was a toddler (an event I don’t remember) thus silencing F#. We couldn’t afford to tune the piano, so its sound progressively weakened. The unfairness of the value of the piano versus my injury is in the careful juxtaposition of “ I was / blamed for fracturing F# though my mother / never apologized for splitting open my head.” The piano, an inanimate object could be fractured (a medical term) but my head injury never warranted a hospital trip.
When, as a teen, I avoided confrontation entirely, I no longer ventured to the living room to hear my mother playing. Instead, I’d pause whatever music I was listening to and paused outside the back door of the living room to listen. The piano, after all, is my favorite instrument. Besides, the sheer amount of objects in the living room made it impossible to navigate in my later teenage years. My ex-parents were (I presume still are) hoarders; the living room was a perpetual state of a towering mess. The “places I could safely / shed” are all those items, rooms, and memories I would discard to never again touch once I ran away.
The piano is where my mother could release the pain, suffering, and agony from the abuse she endured from her husband — a man she never called her husband but instead “your father.” My favorite two songs were those which she ended on: a syrupy rendition of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, then Beth by KISS. Though Beth is a ballad, she played it with sheer anger “like injured insults or diffused jabs.” When you sat in the same room, her fingernails would click angrily as what was supposed to be a soft and soothing song was instead rendered “a livid manifesto.”
Both my elder ex-sister and I had taken piano lessons and learned how to play the piano. While my older sister was encouraged to participate in recitals, I wasn’t worth the expense (not to mention they deemed my face too ugly to show in public). Though I had developed a talent for the piano: could memorize songs, could read sheet music, and had even written my first song (with lyrics) by eighth grade, I never received praise; instead, my mother shamed me each time I played. It was the first and last song I ever wrote. Suicidal tendencies are hinted at throughout the poem (I attempted suicide numerous times between the ages of eleven and seventeen) and one of these references concludes the poem (one ought not have growing pains if they were never meant to be alive in the first place, right?): “My growing pains of imperfection were flossed / until, obedient daughter, I abandoned my passion / to ensure she remained best in house.”
