“Hey Julia, would it be possible for me to borrow your keys to the Reynolds Hall practice rooms?” my old duet partner from chamber music class asked me.
“Of course. You can keep them. I won’t need them any time soon,” I replied. The clang of my keys echoed as she walked down the hallway — a quiet farewell from a relic of my past. A year ago, I could never have imagined doing this.
Piano was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the blissful pain in my back as I hit my fourth consecutive hour of practicing and the laughter permeating the hallways as I joked with my friends in the pre-college program at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.
However, recently, piano has felt more like a wound than a comfort. When applying to colleges last March, I focused primarily on conservatories with piano performance programs. All of these conservatories rejected me.
My love of music created both joy and sadness — joy in the moment, and sadness in knowing that this chapter of my life was ending. At Georgetown University, I wanted to fight for my music. I enrolled in chamber music and composed for Mask & Bauble’s production of “The Great Gatsby.” In doing this, I began to realize that multiple realities could be true at once. As Georgetown students, we must look beyond what’s presented to us. Often, our internal struggles differ from the facades we present, but what we don’t realize is that both these personas have truth to them.
When I started my freshman year at Georgetown, on the outside, I was hitting my marks, finding any opportunity I could to continue with music. On the inside, I knew that I was forcing myself into a community that wasn’t a creative match for me.
Amid my fading love for music, I enrolled in International Relations and a combined history and English seminar. There, I found new outlets for my creativity, from working through human rights dilemmas to analyzing the role of religious rhetoric in British abolitionism. These classes helped forge my newfound passion for literature and politics, replacing the joy I once found in music. I mourned the limited time I had left with music, but I couldn’t wait to discover my new direction.
I urge Georgetown students to acknowledge their own set of multiple realities. Music was my life, but I needed to leave it behind to pursue a different life that I had never imagined. Too often, we characterize ourselves with a single story and feel shocked when we are forced to confront that narrative. I challenge the Georgetown community to see people as collections of multiple stories. People are not one-dimensional, and it is important for everyone to see and understand every side of their peers.
When I hear my old duet partner’s stories about her new quartet, I’m no longer envious of the bond they’re currently forming through chamber music. I don’t miss the world of music at the Rice pre-college program or the “Gatsby” violinist I used to know. Still, whenever I see Georgetown’s McNeir Hall or hear orchestra gossip from my best friend, I’m reminded of how much I miss performing. I feel the nostalgia of forming a siblinghood with the cellist in my high school piano quintet and proudly inviting everyone to hear my music in “Gatsby.” All of these realities are my truth.
Music’s imprint on me still exists. It’s part of who I am, even when that aspect of my life has faded. While I don’t long to go back to Gatsby music recordings or the Georgetown chamber music showcase, I’m grateful for how music shaped my thinking. Music unlocked a creativity in me that now shows in my writing and my philosophy. If I’d never experienced the difficulties and disappointment I did during my piano era, I wouldn’t be writing this story for the Georgetown community.
Despite my efforts to distance myself from music, though, I still gravitate toward it. When I hear a song playing at a restaurant, I tell my friends, “God, I love the cello line, do you hear that?” Although I don’t feel ready to return to the piano, I still get excited when I buy tickets to National Symphony concerts.
The next time we’re tempted to say, “That’s totally out of character,” let’s instead acknowledge that the existence of multiple realities is what makes us human.
Julia Nguyen is a first-year in the College of Arts & Sciences. This is the first installment of her new column “The Complexities of Coming of Age.”