no really, I am learning something.

so this is what I’ve been doing in my free time, and by free time I mean time when I should be working on my paper for roots of political theory but don’t feel like it:

pour le piano toccata

I’m teaching myself a new song. Debussy’s Pour Le Piano (III Toccata).
for the past six years or so I’ve had this giant binder containing the collected works of Claude Debussy (I learned three pieces in high school, but I’ve never really touched the rest of them). when I came to school I didn’t even think to bring any music with me, so about a week in I asked my mom to send me some — and she sent me the Debussy binder. unfortunately, the three pieces I do know aren’t actually in the binder (my fault; I put them in a smaller binder a while ago), so I was stuck with no music that I could play with ease. but since I’ve been itching to play piano, I decided to teach myself something new.
it probably doesn’t sound like that big a deal, learning a new song; and as you pianists will be able to tell by looking at the music, the difficulty level’s not that high. but since it’s been over two years since I learned a new classical piece, it’s kind of a big deal for me. the thing is ten or so pages long, but I just pulled out the first three to get a handle on first, so as not to get overwhelmed. it’s going well so far.
it’s strange to be learning something again. I will at times get frustrated with myself for having to pause and figure out the notes. I’ll get to the end of my three pages and want to play the rest of the song, but then remind myself that I need to really learn this chunk first (luckily, I left the rest of it in my room, so it’s not as tempting as it could be). I had forgotten how it feels to be excited about learning a new song. I’ve already practiced three times, and I want to go back tonight after dinner and work on it some more. I miss being good at piano.