“Music is a reflection of one’s life. The way you go about life is reflected in your playing. It’s healing, strengthens the soul.” - Dominique Piana, my confidant and music teacher for the past 6 years.

            I gave my heart to music when I was just three years old. I’ve played for as long as I can remember and loved for longer. When I learned my abc’s, I learned ‘red strings C, blue strings F’ alongside. In my kindergarten classroom I would laugh and play with the other students, afterwards changing into concert attire to play at weddings, birthday parties, retirement homes, and my favorite, music festivals. By the time I had finally learned how to ride a bike at eight years old, fingers calloused from hours of playing, I’d began the piano, and had already been playing the harp for years. 

Difficult memories, blisters making it hard to grip rainbow crayons in my stubby fist, stretching with all my might to reach the piano pedals, saying goodbye to harp after harp as I grew older. I pushed through, even very young I knew that music was something I loved and would willingly spend hours strumming away. My happiest memories, painless fingers dancing their way across strings with newly toughened skin, the joy I felt when I played an octave on the piano for the first time, discovering that as each harp grew, so did I. 

There are two main kinds of harpists where I live, celtic and classical, neither are common musicians. Celtic harps are of Irish descent. They are smaller than their classical counterparts and have levers that change from natural to sharp or flat. Celtic harps come in a range of sizes and sounds, from just the eight stringed lap harps to the largest celtic harps four feet in height. Classical harps originated from Europe, specifically France, where they spread throughout the centuries across the globe, from the cross-stringed Spanish harps to Mediterranean metal-stringed harps. Classical harps have 47 strings, and seven different foot pedals that change the note from flat to natural to sharp and vice versa. The smallest classical harps get is around five and a half feet, but the average size of a harp is six feet in height. A few years ago I could name five or six classical harpists living in my area, currently I am the only one. 

I began the harp at three as a celtic harpist, after all the twenty or so harpists who do live here stem from one original celtic harpist, my first teacher. Having been forced into shifting from celtic harp to classical at eight, a decision made by my loving parents that I strongly resented at the time, I was involuntarily coerced into leaving my teacher of four years. Saying goodbye and finding a new teacher was hard, my family and I began traveling farther and farther, before finally my parents decided on my current teacher and friend, Mrs. Dominique Piana. 

I don’t think that it is any stretch to say that at the beginning, we did not get along. I knew the celtic harp, so different from the classical ones. Forced to start all over again on a foreign instrument, with a strange sound, and very different rules, it was much more difficult re-learning the harp than learning how to play the first time. The classical harp world is a much colder place to newcomers, I left my first competition in tears, almost giving up on the harp entirely. If not at Mrs. Piana’s insistence that I stay, I would have done so. 

Despite my dismal debut into a new harp world, Mrs. Piana and I grew close as I fought to find the motivation to play. In the six years since then Mrs. Piana has been my longest friend, cheering me on while I played with a broken arm, gifting me her fancy concert attire outfits, introducing me to her former teacher and esteemed harpist Susan McDonald, most recently coaching me through my latest competition despite not having seen each other throughout the span of the pandemic, this time leaving victorious with a shiny silver metal. Mrs. Piana has always been a supportive friend who I know I can turn to whenever I struggle. At fourteen my life has been filled with music. Dancing, swaying, lyrical music that I imprinted into memories and made my own. 

“You haven’t changed at all,” she said from behind her glasses, eyes and mouth crinkling in a rare smile as I gazed into a face I hadn’t seen for the past two years.

 I grinned broadly back inside my mask, noticing that I no longer had to crane my neck to look into her watery blue eyes. Her hair was more yellowish than before and a few more wrinkles had been drawn on her face and hands, but she was still the same dearest friend I had known pre-pandemic. Eyes burning with the effort not to cry, I laughed as she waved me into an ever rarer hug, pretending not to notice when she sneakily rubbed her eyes on her sleeve. 

            She gestured towards her sitting room, four beautiful harps, with two more in her living room, standing reagally side by side. An instrument is an extension of yourself, like a piece of your soul given physical shape. Losing my harp would be like losing a limb. I’ve played for so long, and given so much to music that I know no matter how much I may want to give up sometimes, I will always come back to the music and person that I love. My hands are shaking slightly, but I wipe them on my jeans as we both take a seat. We can do nothing for a moment but continue to smile just as ridiculously wide as before. 

“You haven’t changed either,” I say, moving the harp to lay across my chest. I raise my hands to the strings and begin to play.