A couple of days back, my piano finally arrived after a rather suspenseful 2 weeks of freight tracing, delivery mishaps and emails. 

That might sound trivial to some, but my relationship with the piano is complicated in layers so multiple that attempting to unpack it in one go is not the kind of thing I find myself articulate enough to do just yet, so let me try and see if I can do justice to that subject header now that I have the drama on.

I've gone on the record often in 'jest' (= ‘true word’ -Shakespeare anyone?), on how the day I know I'm ready to 'settle' is when the room I'm living in is one that has a piano inside it.

Purists are allowed to call me out, for it's still not an acoustic that graced my humble Berlin apartment just yet and I’m willing to make a note of that and the implications they might hint at. 

For context: most of my practice these past, very nomadic years has been inside studios and conservatories (literally) all over the world that I've been attached to, collaborated with or was working at. The privileges of moving in the cirlces I do have given me some grace. 

But I’d like to state for the record that the new member of my personal family arsenal is one of the closest things to one in my opinion that I (again, literally), endorse, so consider hearing me out. 

Allow me the liberty of exhibit A.

I should offer a disclaimer at this point that I have been brand ambassador for over a decade for these wonderful folks, who a lot of people don't know, are still primarily a family business of some 20+ people (don't quote me on that number), where every instrument is hand-made. You might have seen them around with some of your favourite artists.

That’s just a little fan-boy tidbit though- the crux of what I've been contemplating on this week is something else.

In one of the most therapy-intensive phases in my life, my counselor once shared a sentence that hit…well, home (..again - layers.)

'…your home has been destroyed'.

He was speaking in metaphors to describe the interior state I had been carrying. 

A couple of years later the metaphor got real in ways that would give David Lynch a run for his money.

My apartment in the south of Germany completely destroyed after 7 months of me being stuck amidst international lockdowns, 6 cancelled flights and quarantines that kept changing protocol and relationships that were forming and falling apart at speeds that I doubt our ancestors passed the appropriate neurons equipped to handle down to us.

That apartment, that I'd come back to amidst sporadic weeks balancing bases between London, Lisbon and Mumbai was also a 4th of my studio.

One trickle of hot water from a slightly loose tap over 7 months inside German engineering equipped for deep winters and not scalding heat, was enough to destroy it all.

(Bruce Lee really knew what he was talking about).

At college, I was the boring, ‘square’ guy making sure he had insurance. Truth is, I was less 'square' and more an immigrant who'd been stateless twice in his life, acutely aware of how a single piece of paper can be the leaf that turns a life around, or upside down.

So the insurance covered damages.

But the gaping hole the event left within took a minute to come to terms with, and till date, I cannot look at the photographs without mourning a little for what a life I was clearly ready to untether myself and move on from, stood for despite. 

A life that symbolized some much-needed relief for a 20-year-old ‘boy’ eluding demons in desperate search for a space where being himself was not an offence punishable in ways most of the ‘developed’ world are still not really equipped to fathom.

The apartment was a shoe box, with mostly musical equipment next to a mattress I slept on and a desk I wrote at between touring and travels to meet family.

It was home on paper. Turns out Mother Kali saw it differently. And pushed me not-so-gently to stop kidding myself with theories otherwise.

For the 6 years that have followed I have tested one of the scariest theories some of my teachers have been helping heal wounds with.

Asking myself who I am when not hiding behind a piano, a spotlight or onstage trying to convert relics of adversities into beauty via the medium of art.

Asking myself:

Am I safe if I stop singing?

Am I safe without a piano as armour?

Is music truly my Identity, or medicine I have run the risk of overdosing on to numb out with?

To put my money where my word is, I have lived without my bedroom being a studio these past 6 years. 

I work in shared co-working spaces and studios, I do not accept lame offers for concerts, students or clients for a beer and testimonial to feed the IV drip of addiction to validity that’s left the state of my industry as broken as it is, and most importantly I have stopped collapsing the idea of art being represented by the instruments that carry it, without dismissing the beauty in their presence and the love that goes into making them, which is an art in itself.

I needed that time away from this marriage to see if true love is a myth.

My conclusions?

This is going to be weirder than usual, but last night, I said this out loud to my piano: 

'I'm so happy that you're here'.

I'd totally understand if that makes you look for the 'unsubscribe' link right now, but it's the simplest way to describe how I feel about music today.

Just having its presence in my life. The privilege of engaging with it. Knowing I've spent enough time and energy into the process to ensure that the way I go about it is appropriate, loving, deep and respectful.

A relationship where we listen to each other. 

I am sober. 

I do not push art up my veins to feel whole anymore, I am here, alive and writing some of my best work (in my opinion) without anxious pumping out of scales, arpeggios, vocal acrobatics and/or sight-reading drills to appease the ghosts of my past.

I am not scared shitless anymore that I will 'lose it'. 

Be ‘left behind’. 

And this despite living inside a circus where the clown thinks they become a 'musician' by typing prompts into a robot.

To end on a 'why this matters' note:

I suspect the lesser I needed music to 'represent' me, the closer I ended up getting to its essence.

The instruments, studios, stages, and hours spent developing an ability continue to matter enough to me to devote a lifetime to them.

And understanding that they are not where music comes from any more than a house is a ‘home’, wasn't the sweetest pill I've swallowed.

Which is why this particular era of prompt-generated 'art' feels less 'threatening' to me than just really, really embarrassing for the species I happen to be a part of.

A machine's ability to materialize form has never been in question.

But the form was never 'music'.

The intention behind building a relationship with it was.

A piano won’t really provide that. 

Neither will a stage, a ‘fan following’, a ‘career’ or that robot a tormented tech-guru insists on selling as ‘intelligence’.

It feels good to let a piano back into my home without asking something inappropriate of it.

Proof, that music lives here.

Thinkers & Fellow Travellers: ‘Why keep playing music’: Excerpt and thoughts from my conversation with Peter Crone. 

Friends of music: an IG video where I talk of essence in an ‘acoustic vs electric’ video of my playing the same song in two different situations. 

Nord Nerds: A comparison video I did on Nord Stage 4 vs Nord Grand 2 at the official Nord Studios in Berlin.