Sometimes, you just have to rage.

For sure, sometimes rage is justified, like that time when some random in class starts going on about how your motherland is basically all about that propaganda lyf and what he says just gets worse and worse and at some point could probably be counted as racial hate in a way and you get all worked up because you’re getting personally offended because they’re insulting your roots even though you insult your roots yourself 90% of the time but it’s different when some outsider is doing it and it’s just like YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU’RE SAYING YOU’RE MAKING IT ALL UP NOW STOP JUST STOP A;DLFKJAL;KDFJ

And so on.

But most of the time, that rage is uncalled for. Like when your mum decides to clean out your room and chuck half of what she call ‘rubbish’. Or when a friend is being stupid and not seeing sense and you have had enough about just how blind and immature they’re acting so you get all angry and immature too.

And sometimes, you get inexplicably angry explaining things to people -coughdadscough- who are just missing the point.

Today, my dad decided to ask if it was possible to memorise twenty minutes worth of music to play and perform. Concert pianists memorise hours of music, so of course it’s possible.  Personally, I have strong aural and muscle memory, and I began to elaborate how it’s hard for me to change things once I’ve committed it to memory because I essentially have to record over the permanent track in my head every single time I play.

And then he had the bright idea that it was the best type of memory, because then it meant that as long as I heard things a certain way, I would be able to produce it exactly as how I hear it. Fair enough, because it’s true… but it’s not possible for someone to learn just from hearing things. It means you have no foundation. You can’t read music, you can’t fix yourself, you have no basis for anything you do or anything you play apart from what you hear.

“But that’s a good thing! If I give you a track of a world famous concert pianist, then you’d become them too! And you would be perfect!”

WHAT GAVE YOU THAT IDEA YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING WITHOUT FOUNDATIONS AND TECHNIQUE

Dancers can’t just watch other dancers and copy to become great without knowing the basic moves or without training their flexibility and coordination. Builders can’t just look at a house and copy it to build solid architectural monuments without knowing what tools or materials they need. Singers can’t copy Beyoncé without technique and not ruin their voice forever.

Besides, every player has their own nuances, their own take on pieces.  To be successful, you need to find a personal balance between interpretation and staying true to the music.  You can’t just copy someone’s style.  It just doesn’t work.

And so the more we argued, the more I didn’t get why he didn’t just understand. In the end, I just stood up and left the room.

Looking back on it, it was probably the mature thing to stay calm and rationally present my arguments.

But sometimes, you just have to rage.