memories in forgotten tunes

visiting Seoul Forest, Rowan and I came across an old piano which, miraculously (as it was left outdoors and it had been snowing quite heavily prior to our arrival in the city), was still in working order. Rowan sat on the bench, bunching her coat on the seat to avoid its tails touching the cigarette butts and spit on the ground beneath, and cautiously lay her fingers on the keys. She had continued with piano lessons well into high-school, unlike me, who dropped it in year 8 and suddenly I was thrown back to a time when we would frequent the tiny blacked-out practice rooms at school during lunch to avoid the heat. We would take turns on the piano as I would fuck about playing random keys and she would practice actual pieces. Years went by like this. As she began to play I recognised the tune immediately. It was not perfectly fast and intricate like my memories of her constant recital back in high-school, but the tune was there none the same.

I wanted to share this because of how much this tune has encompassed. Unknowingly so much of my life had roots within this tune, a song to this day that I don’t even know the name of.

We don’t choose what we remember and this is one of those strange points of almost physical recollection that I doubt will ever leave me.