Perishable Skills

As well as magic, I love music. I play guitar, I sing in my car and I've always got some tune swimming around in my head. So, last year, early on in lockdown, I decided to learn piano… well, keyboard at least. I spent two months, practicing most days and I learned how to read music, where the notes were on the keyboard and got to know a few chords.

And then I stopped. Life suddenly became very busy again and I didn't tinkle the ivories again… until a week ago. I decided to plug in the keyboard and pick up where I left off.

I was lost. I couldn't remember how to shape the chords. I could still read the music, but couldn't think which keys correlated with which notes. When it came to playing anything at all with my left hand, I might as well have been trying to get a tune out of a block of cheese.

I know I'm always be able to form a G chord on guitar, or cut a deck of cards with one hand, or make a dog from a balloon because these are things that I practiced again and again and again when I first learned them. They're hardwired into my existence now.

The other day at a party, I was making balloon models and a little girl asked me to make her a unicorn. I just looked at her.

I've made unicorns before, and they are straightforward enough. I haven't made them that often though and when this girl asked for one, I could not remember how to do it. I ended up making a rocking horse, which is more complex, uses more balloons and takes longer, because I have made lots of them. She was happy, I was relieved, but I was also annoyed at myself.

This incident, along with getting the keyboard back out and trying to remember some Polish I'd learned to speak ten years ago, showed me that learning something is all well and good, but to truly know how to do it, you really have to practice!

Learn it. Practice it. Practice it again. And again. And again. And again…