(no subject)

[rivka]

I'm having one of those evenings where I feel lonely and at loose ends. I'm supposed to be working on my dissertation, and slowly I'm actually developing inclinations to do so - it usually takes a while - but in the meantime I've been drifting from book to computer to TV without really settling in anywhere.

I sat down at my piano for the first time in a long time. Many, many years ago, I was a good pianist. Not concert good, or jazz improv good, but I used to play classical pieces well enough to please myself and the casual listener. The last time that was true was... wow. The last time that was true was my first year of college, twelve years ago.

I stopped practicing when I moved off campus and no longer had easy access to an instrument. In graduate school, I bought a piano, but that seems to have been too late. At that point I was so far out of practice that I only felt comfortable playing when no one was home, so that no one would hear my stumbling fingers. More importantly, I had lost my piano muscles. Because of the way my right elbow doesn't bend, I have to hold my arm at an awkward angle to play, and eventually it starts aching. When I was well practiced, "eventually" meant "after about an hour." Today it was closer to five minutes.

It makes me a little wistful to think of how much better I was at this when I was fourteen. I don't know whether I'll ever get back to playing regularly, or if it will always be a talent I had and then lost.

I'll borrow a style from elisem, and close this with a question: Have you ever recovered a lost skill?

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Sure. Guitar. I was good in college, I lost it, somewhat, and now that it's part of my once-a-week Hebrew school teaching job, I'm as good as I ever was. I injured my left hand when I was 16, and that muscle damage used to prevent me from playing for long, except when I was in training. I got out of training, and went back into training.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it was lost, exactly, but when I returned to acting after a decade's hiatus, I felt as if all the tools in my acting toolbox had gone dull and rusty - the stage, where I'd always felt perfectly at home, was like an ice rink, and me with no skates.

I can't say I was very good in that first performance after returning, but I did still love doing it, so I kept at it, and managed to get it back.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

I recently relearned how to knit, after a lapse of fifteen (or so) years. :)

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

I'm still thinking about this.

I suspect that you only have time to practice so many skills. If you're picking up new ones and not dropping them, it's going to cut into your time for the old ones.

On the other hand, I bet that in some cases, the horror at knowing what you've lost can be offset by the rememberance of how good it felt to do it well. And also by remembering what it feels like to do it right, period -- no groping about in the dark.

On the other other hand, you might have a perspective now that makes it less important to be that good again -- for one thing, some of the skills transfer. A sense of rhythm, the coordination, the ability to read music, a familiarity with certain forms of music, which makes it easier to get through other music-related exercises.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Sure. Any physical skill requires practice or you lose the edge. Every time I go back to running - just to mention one example - there's the familiar process of initial muscular pain followed by progressive stretching out and speeding up as the days go by. If I go back to fencing it'll be the same, I'm sure. The memory our muscles hold doesn't last as long as the memories our minds can hold. Thus we have to reteach the muscles each time we come back from a haitus.

[lcohen]

i didn't sing, as in sing seriously for the 14 years between my junior year of college and when my ex left me. growing up i could get to the F above high C and my range contracted to the point where an octave below that was pushing it.

so coming out of the divorce, my gift to myself despite desperate financial straits was voice lessons--el cheapo voice lessons but one hour a week for myself plus practicing in the car during my 45 minute to 1 hour commute to tapes i made each week of the lesson since i had no stereo, post-divorce, but i did have a cassette player in the car. i deliberately picked things to push my range and it was a long time coming back--i still can't get back up to that F but i have all the notes that i need to sing first soprano. after a year i auditioned for the university of chicago chorus and got in and have been singing with them ever since.

i don't think i even realized how much i missed singing in a choir until i started doing it again but it's totally worth all the hours i put into vocalizing and rehearsing.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I recovered my creativity. I'm not sure that counts as a skill, but parts of it certainly qualify.

What you say about being better at fourteen, though, that's how I feel about vocal music. It was very weird to start singing again after years of basically not singing a note. My voice has completely changed, and I no longer have the control over it that I used to have. I still have a decent voice, but I won't ever be able to make money with it again. Oddly enough, though, that's okay with me.

-J

[dedoc.livejournal.com]

Leatherwork, here. Cutting patterns, tooling, crafting, stamping, embossing, dyeing. I did something of a lot of it as a youth; stopped doing it for years, as other things kept pushing their way to the forefront; started again as part of the effort to prepare for the costume competition at the 1999 North American SF convention....

and now I kinda fnordel through a small piece, keeping skills up, while I think of what might be a nice project next.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

I seem to be recovering my skill at skiing. We went skiing this afternoon and by the second run I felt relaxed and making what felt like smooth turns. Now I'm really looking forward to next week's ski vacation.

[lerryn.livejournal.com]

Volleyball. I was good in 8th grade, and then high school didn't have a men's team. I picked it up again in college and developed a feared left-handed sidearm serve :)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

I've gotten back physical and mental skills that I'd thought lost (though some probably weren't as lost as they'd seemed).

It sounds like getting it back would require you to decide if you want to keep it, semi-long-term or not, though.

Herm. I do feel like I should mention that, if you haven't already, if you decide to start practicing again, you might want to change from "not playing, unless no one is home" to "not playing, unless only friends are home". The fumbles are probably more painful to your ear than to anyone else's.

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

I've found that languages I haven't used in a while do come back if I settle in to reading things in them on a regular basis. I've lost Spanish several times over the years, and find that it *will* return if I work at it a while.

On the other hand, I have been frustrated recently at having lost the ability to memorize piano pieces. I can learn them by heart, but it takes much longer than it did, and I find that when I learn a new one I lose the immediately previous one learnt. Seemingly in compensation, I have become *slightly* better at sight-reading -- still atrocious, alas... I''ve recently started to learn to play the bandura -- and find myself frustrated that my fingers won't achieve even the speed they have at the piano... a different set of muscles seems to be involved, or something...