Sometimes the ability to see is what screws up our vision.
My half sister is blind.
A tragic accident when she was young that left her completely blind for most of her life.
It didn’t stop her from doing anything though.
Cripes, she skii’d, mountain climbed, did all sorts of sports. And was good at them.
Another thing that amazed me about her and Frustrated Me at the same time is this.
She would always speak like a person who had perfect vision even though she was as blind as you can get.
For instance.
We were picking out stone veneer to put on her house and I kid you not, she sent back 10 samples because they weren’t the exact color she was looking for.
She would say, “Where is the sample of the stone?”
I would take her over there and give her a brief description and then she would say something like,”You know Tim, It doesn’t have enough red in it for me. Let’s get something with a little more red.”
I thought about lying to her, but she could always tell if a person was lying or not. She was a lie detecting machine.
But one thing I thought was really cool about being blind is that she still judged people like we all do sometimes, but it had nothing to do with what she saw.
It’s how they made her feel. Tone of their voice, their attitude, etc.
She seemed to have almost perfect vision in that sense.
And a lot of times I had terrible vision and could see perfectly.
Thinking about her today got me thinking about piano.
How sometimes being able to see, and look for the mistakes in our playing keeps us from just playing.
So just for fun.
Close your eyes when you play this week. I almost guarantee you will play way better than you expect.
And when you do this, you will reach another level of playing because you won’t depend on looking at the keys as much.
I am serious. Try it. No peeking.
And if you haven’t got on board with the PianoFool Layer Method of playing then go here to sign up.
