When I was eight, my piano teacher gave me a piece of music I had never seen before.
I looked at the notes and felt confused, not because it was difficult, but because I already knew how it sounded.
Before my teacher played it, I started playing the first part myself.
She asked if I had practiced it before. I said no. She did not believe me.
The strange thing is that my hands knew where to go before I understood what I was doing. It felt less like learning and more like remembering.
Later, my mother told me that when I was very small, I used to say I had “another piano” in “another room.”
Nobody in my family played piano before me.
I still play that song sometimes. Every time I do, I get the feeling that somewhere, in some other life, I used to play it for someone who is no longer here.