Filling a Hole Within.

Posted by Ahmed Anzaldúa on March 27, 2011. 0 comments

All of a sudden I get the urge to play a specific piece in recital. I may have practically no time for it — having to balance family, teaching, and learning the repertoire that I’m actually getting payed to play — but it’s an urge that is very hard to resist. There’s a hole inside of me that needs to be filled by what that particular piece of music is saying. Like a blank space on the wall that is urging you to paint it, or cover it up with something. Most of the time, just sitting down in private and mucking around with the music is not enough; the urge to play it for an audience is overwhelming.

I think that this need is what is behind art, a need to fill up holes within ourselves. At some point the composer also felt that urge to fill his own void with sound. That’s the closest I can come to explain how it feels; there may be no practical reason to play that recital, but there is something within that needs attention, a hole that may be making everything else come out of balance. The best part of the whole experience comes afterward, once you are playing and someone in the audience finds that what you are playing also fills a similar hole of their own. That is probably the greatest thing I can get out of a recital, not having it be “beautiful” or “well-played” but having it be something that helps fill a hole in my soul and does the same for someone else.