Indigo
“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” Stella Adler
When I was little, I loved playing the piano. I still do.
I could sit in a tiny practice room for hours on end. Later, my dad bought me an upright piano. I don’t recall him verbally expressing affection towards us when my brothers and I were growing up. For him, providing us with things that made us happy was his way of showing love.
Many students complain about having to practice scales and learn music theory, but that was never the case for me. I just loved every aspect of learning. This is something my mum told me much later: my piano teacher had asked her if she would consider training me to become a professional pianist. She said no. She feared the rigor and intensity of that path.
Additionally, the cost of training and sending me to a music conservatory would have been prohibitively expensive. I’m thankful for how my parents invested in my music education. Generally, I trust their decisions, as they always have my best interests at heart. The piano has always been my lifelong friend. After a long day, it brings life back to me and reminds me that I am alive.
Maybe it’s a good thing that playing the piano didn’t become my profession. After all, I wanted to come to law school so badly, but once studying law became my job, the initial excitement gave way to frustration and exhaustion. It might have been the same with playing music professionally. Still, I wonder — what would have happened if my mum had asked me what I wanted in life?
Shortly after my piano teacher suggested preparing me to be a professional pianist, my parents decided I should quit the lessons. It was time to focus more on academics as I moved to an upper grade. In high school, I played the clarinet because it was easier to participate in extracurricular activities that way. There were more spots available for clarinetists in marching bands or woodwind ensembles than for pianists.
Being in a concert band, though, was a completely different experience. I loved the connection and harmony. Piano felt more like a solo instrument to me. Most of the time, I played it alone. My first experience of being deeply connected with others as an adolescent came when my partner and I sat next to each other, sharing a music stand. By then, we’d been playing the same piece for nearly a week, practicing over eight hours a day.
Now we were on stage, with all eyes on us. As we played the piece we had rehearsed more than a hundred times, I knew exactly where my partner was, and he knew where I was too. Nothing need to be said. It was also my first realizing we don’t always need verbal communication to feel connected.
My next profound experience with music came in a place and situation I never envisioned myself being in. Walking into a psychiatric ward, I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. After being raped in my dorm, my psychiatrist diagnosed me with PTSD and acute anxiety. She also determined that I was a danger to myself and others.
I was in a foreign country, thousands of miles away from everything familiar. My parents had no idea what was happening to me, and there was no way to communicate with them. The ward had a strict policy of not permitting patients to keep their phones or use them. To this day, I still wonder which was more traumatizing — the assault itself or the hospitalization.
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The morning after I spent my first night at the ward, I woke up and was told to go to a room across the hallway. When I entered, it was full of young medical students. It was a university hospital, and they allowed training students to ‘observe’ us. The rape made me feel like toilet paper — used and disposed of to fulfill other people’s primal needs. The experience of being in that room made me feel like a laboratory rat.
Both experiences made me feel like something beneath a human being, completely devoid of any agency. It was profoundly dehumanizing and deeply traumatizing. I wanted to ask my psychiatrist whether she really thought forcing me to open up about rape to a group of strangers was a good idea or if she just wanted to evade any liability. It took me years to build trust with another psychiatrist.
For the first two days, I was too overwhelmed to notice anything about my surroundings. I only saw a giant TV in a lounge, some old magazines, and other patients in identical hospital gowns we were required to wear. Strangely, wearing that uniform made me forget who I was outside of this place. My individual self was gone, and I was there as a hospital chart, to be controlled and instructed.
t was cherry blossom season in DC. As we all stared at the cherry blossom trees on a TV screen, we wondered what it would be like to be outside this building. I also wondered how long I would have to stay here.
Probably on my third or fourth day there, I noticed a room with a piano. It was a total surprise — this was the last place I expected to find a musical instrument. I walked in. Out of all the pianos I had ever played, this one looked the oldest and most run-down. Several keys were missing, and it clearly hadn’t been tuned in years. But it was still a piano.
The whole hospitalization had happened so abruptly that I brought nothing with me. I thought I was going to see my psychiatrist for a regular consultation and never imagined I would end up spending nights in a ward. My roommate must have thought I’d simply disappeared. Naturally, I hadn’t brought any sheet music with me, so I had to play everything from memory.
I started playing Indigo, Kiss the Rain, and River Flows In You. These are all composed by Yiruma, a renowned pianist and composer from South Korea. His music makes me feel as if my body is immersed in ocean waves — calm, soothing, and relaxing, which was the complete opposite of what this place offered.
As I began to play, I was met with another surprise. The music still sounded beautiful. I could feel the same beauty, joy, and flow in the music, even on that broken piano. Some notes were silent because pressing the keys produced no sound. Yet, despite its flaws, the piano created something profoundly beautiful.
Ten years have passed, but those memories haven’t faded. I still play those same pieces, especially when I feel defeated or drained. They remind me of the message that echoed in my mind as I played those pieces in that psychiatric ward:
Sometimes, your life may feel broken, and run-down. But if a broken piano can create something so beautiful, then so can you. Your life can always start anew, and it holds a purpose. The way others treat you or your body can never truly define your value or what you bring to this world.
I don’t think my parents ever wanted any of their children to witness some of the uglier aspects of human nature. Humans are capable of committing unbelievable acts of violence against one another, dehumanizing each other, and making someone feel completely dead inside without physically ending their life. That’s what rape did to me.
But my parents did help me prepare for the rough and tumble of life, which is not all rainbows and unicorns. Art has the power to bring you back to life, restore you, and remind you of who you truly are at your core. Through the power of art, I was able to navigate life’s ups and downs and remain intact, never losing sight of who I am and what I’m made of.
