Performing Mendelssohn’s Regrets

On the stage of an empty performance hall sat a grand piano. I was at its keys, and I was an enigma starved like a Russian revolutionary. I thought, be familiar with hunger such that you will always strive to improve. It was a desperate mantra. For the age to become a virtuoso had passed and all that remained was mediocrity. I was consumed by the idea of mediocrity. It was everywhere, and there was no ridding myself of it.

Hence, the only path forward was madness…

My index finger pressed middle C. I looked to the seats. The lights were dim. Angels were present, but not only angels also devils. I was Orpheus. This was my hell. I lowered my head and began to play Felix Mendelssohn’s Regrets. 

“We all have regrets,” my instructor said. “Be connected. You must express your personal emotion into the piece. That is what makes it art. That’s what makes you an artist.”

As I played, I loathed my life and loathed my failure. If only I could relive the last ten years, what I could be. Greatness was within. The desire and the discipline was within. Though, my technique failed me, I crudely interpreted an ornament and continued playing.

My spirit was asphyxiated by the fires of regret. I imagined an audience. Not a large audience a few aficionados and a critic. I imagined myself an unwritten scene in The Tropic of Cancer. It was 1930s Paris. Henry Miller was the critic. The piece resolved and possibly something was redeemed. I sat silently; my head bowed.

Then the shadow of an older woman walked from the behind the curtain. I looked up to her, and with astonishment she looked back at me.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said and then disappeared.

Not long after, I was locked in a psych ward with an impoverished mind. Now twenty-three years have passed, and I have no regrets but know only beauty and beauty divine.

written by: Brett Wiley