A Pianist Changes Her Tune
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario on October 07, 2020
Video Transcript
CREW: And sound speeds.
Camera.
Andrea on the piano, take one.
INTERVIEWER: Tell us what it is, Andrea.
ANDREA AVERY: This is Schubert's Sonata in B flat, the second movement, the andante sostenuto movement.
[MUSIC - ANDREA AVERY, "SONATA IN B FLAT]
My name is Andrea Avery. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 30 years ago this spring, and I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I remember my first piano lesson, and my piano teacher said, wow. You're just-- you're going like a house on fire. And I just became obsessed with playing the piano. I played at piano recitals and piano competitions, and I just thought, I figured it out. Other people have to wait until they're grown-ups, but I figured it out. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
The winter that I was in the 6th grade, I started to have symptoms that I'd never had before. I can remember sitting in French class looking at my thumb and thinking, that knuckle looks different. That didn't always look like that. I remember my shoulder, just, I could not raise my arm over my head. It was hot. It was painful. It was throbbing.
And I thought, what on earth? These little episodes just seemed to increase in severity and frequency, until one day, I hopped out of bed and found that I couldn't put any weight on my lower extremities. My knees just buckled beneath me.
And my mom was working a night shift, and so my dad was home with me that morning. And I said, dad, I can't stand up. I can't walk. I can't go to school. And he said, well, get back in bed, and wait until your mom gets here. She'll know what to do. That was probably when she thought, this is not growing pains. This is not delayed-onset muscular soreness. This is a thing that's happening. And-- and she thought it was arthritis. She was right.
I received my official diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis in May of 1989. I left that appointment thinking, all right. So now, I have a diagnosis. That's not going to change much. My wrist will hurt every once in a while. It wasn't going to change who I was. It didn't rattle anything. I probably went home and practiced piano right after school.
Throughout high school and the first half of college, I was able to be kind of both arthritic on the one hand and a pianist on the other. That kind of all started to end in 1998, right before I turned 21. I was stretching before a piano lesson, and I felt the tiniest ping inside my hand, and these two fingers just drooped. And I thought, that's not good. And that was the first time that it was even hinted at that maybe this piano thing isn't going to work out.
This notebook, this impressive notebook, is a set of photocopies of my mother's notebook that she kept for all the years of my illness. So it's just interesting to sort of track the symptoms, and my mom's reaction, and just all the information.
June 5, white bumps on finger joints. June 6, swollen glands, coated tongue. June 8, dry patches on skin on chest. June 11, right elbow swollen, left index finger. Piano, limit to 20 to 30 minutes. I can tell you for sure that did not happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I changed my major from music theory and composition to just a BA in music. I had way more music credits than I needed for a BA in music, but I was missing all these general studies classes.
So I started filling my schedule with classes in the English department, and I started to see that the thing I'd always wanted to do with the piano, invent, and play, and be lyrical, and be creative, and make cool, interesting things that other people applauded or liked, it started to seem like maybe I could do that on a different kind of keyboard. Maybe I could do that in writing. I defected from the music school and I became a graduate student in creative writing.
I think what I love about writing that's the same thing I love about playing the piano or music is that it's a language, that it's playing with language. And when I could write music in prose, then I was no longer an unhappy writer who wishes she was a pianist. I was a pianist at the computer keyboard, and that's when I no longer felt like that was the great loss of my life.
I can no longer use all five of my fingers. These ones don't move. These ones don't feel anything. This knuckle doesn't bend. But I can figure out a way. I'm not going to play perfectly. I'm not going to play every note. I might have to play it below tempo, but it's music, and I'm making it. And I would much rather have imperfect music that I made myself then silence, than no music at all. That I'd rather be a sloppy sort of approximate pianist than a totally muted pianist.
INTERVIEWER: Tell us what it is, Andrea.
ANDREA AVERY: This is Schubert's Sonata in B flat, the second movement, the andante sostenuto movement.
[MUSIC - ANDREA AVERY, "SONATA IN B FLAT]
My name is Andrea Avery. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 30 years ago this spring, and I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I remember my first piano lesson, and my piano teacher said, wow. You're just-- you're going like a house on fire. And I just became obsessed with playing the piano. I played at piano recitals and piano competitions, and I just thought, I figured it out. Other people have to wait until they're grown-ups, but I figured it out. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
The winter that I was in the 6th grade, I started to have symptoms that I'd never had before. I can remember sitting in French class looking at my thumb and thinking, that knuckle looks different. That didn't always look like that. I remember my shoulder, just, I could not raise my arm over my head. It was hot. It was painful. It was throbbing.
And I thought, what on earth? These little episodes just seemed to increase in severity and frequency, until one day, I hopped out of bed and found that I couldn't put any weight on my lower extremities. My knees just buckled beneath me.
And my mom was working a night shift, and so my dad was home with me that morning. And I said, dad, I can't stand up. I can't walk. I can't go to school. And he said, well, get back in bed, and wait until your mom gets here. She'll know what to do. That was probably when she thought, this is not growing pains. This is not delayed-onset muscular soreness. This is a thing that's happening. And-- and she thought it was arthritis. She was right.
I received my official diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis in May of 1989. I left that appointment thinking, all right. So now, I have a diagnosis. That's not going to change much. My wrist will hurt every once in a while. It wasn't going to change who I was. It didn't rattle anything. I probably went home and practiced piano right after school.
Throughout high school and the first half of college, I was able to be kind of both arthritic on the one hand and a pianist on the other. That kind of all started to end in 1998, right before I turned 21. I was stretching before a piano lesson, and I felt the tiniest ping inside my hand, and these two fingers just drooped. And I thought, that's not good. And that was the first time that it was even hinted at that maybe this piano thing isn't going to work out.
This notebook, this impressive notebook, is a set of photocopies of my mother's notebook that she kept for all the years of my illness. So it's just interesting to sort of track the symptoms, and my mom's reaction, and just all the information.
June 5, white bumps on finger joints. June 6, swollen glands, coated tongue. June 8, dry patches on skin on chest. June 11, right elbow swollen, left index finger. Piano, limit to 20 to 30 minutes. I can tell you for sure that did not happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I changed my major from music theory and composition to just a BA in music. I had way more music credits than I needed for a BA in music, but I was missing all these general studies classes.
So I started filling my schedule with classes in the English department, and I started to see that the thing I'd always wanted to do with the piano, invent, and play, and be lyrical, and be creative, and make cool, interesting things that other people applauded or liked, it started to seem like maybe I could do that on a different kind of keyboard. Maybe I could do that in writing. I defected from the music school and I became a graduate student in creative writing.
I think what I love about writing that's the same thing I love about playing the piano or music is that it's a language, that it's playing with language. And when I could write music in prose, then I was no longer an unhappy writer who wishes she was a pianist. I was a pianist at the computer keyboard, and that's when I no longer felt like that was the great loss of my life.
I can no longer use all five of my fingers. These ones don't move. These ones don't feel anything. This knuckle doesn't bend. But I can figure out a way. I'm not going to play perfectly. I'm not going to play every note. I might have to play it below tempo, but it's music, and I'm making it. And I would much rather have imperfect music that I made myself then silence, than no music at all. That I'd rather be a sloppy sort of approximate pianist than a totally muted pianist.
