何か一つ楽器を覚えておけばよかったなと思う。「今からでも遅くないよ」とどこかから聞こえてきそうだが、今は他にやりたいことが多すぎて二の足を踏んでしまう。本当にもうやることがないくらいやり尽くして、少し時間に余裕ができたら挑戦してみようか。引退後でもいいかもしれない。リズムに合わせて手指を動かすことはボケ防止にも良さそうな気がするが、実際はどうなのだろう。上手い下手とか、人に聞かせる等ということは考えず、自己満足の範囲でのチャレンジはありだと思う。何だか楽しみにもなってくる。

　若い頃にギターで挫折している。のめり込む前に止めてしまっているので、何が悪かったのか考察も反省もしていないが、とりあえずやる気と根気が決定的に足りなかった。先生について習いでもしたら違ったかもしれないが、趣味に対して親からお金を出してもらうという発想はなかった。フォークギターを買ってもらっただけで、すでに相当贅沢だと思う。
　練習していても何となく楽しくなかった。最初からできるはずはなく、しかしできなくても面白みが感じられれば私はハマりやすい性格だと思うので、自分でも期待して流れに任せてみたが、やっぱりダメだった。もうよく覚えていないのだが、あまりにもできな過ぎて途方に暮れてしまったのかもしれない。どうしてもFがきちんと握れなかった。今考えると力が入り過ぎていたのだろうか。左手の指先の皮が厚くなって、気になってよくいじっていたことが懐かしい。

　何となくピアノに憧れる。小さなころ住んでいた家の隣の家からいつもキレイなピアノの音色が聞こえてきていたからかもしれない。お隣の奥様は確かピアノの先生で、お上品な感じだった。当時は男の子がピアノを弾くということは今よりずっと珍しく、憧れはあったものの自分でやろうとは思ったことさえなかった。「ピアノは女のもの」という差別的な観念が何だかあって、どちらかと言うと「男がピアノなんてやってられるか！」という感じだった。それは私だけではなく一般的にそんな風潮だったと思う。今考えればバカバカしい話だが、ピアノはお金持ちの家のお嬢様だけのものというイメージで、私なんかには近寄りがたい高嶺の花だったかもしれない。差別感覚はその反動だっただろうか。

　中学の時、男の同級生が当時ピアノを学び始めてびっくりしたことがあった。前述のような時代背景である上、さらに「ピアノは3、4歳から始めるべきもの」というこれまた根拠不明で選民主義的な概念が我々の間にあった。だから普通の中流家庭で育った男の子が中学からピアノを始めるということに、非常に違和感を覚えたものだった。「今からじゃあもう遅いよ。どうせ上手くなれないよ」という、最初から見下したような辛らつな言葉が彼にかけられたと記憶している。私もその一人だった。今考えれば、それは不可能に挑戦しようとする彼への嫉妬心からだったかもしれない。
　ピアノをやってみようかなと想像する時、いつも彼のことを思い出す。中学生時代という早期から始めたんだから、きっと相当上手くなったんだろうなと思う。その道で一流にならないとピアノを弾いてはいけないみたいなクレイジーな観念はどこから来ていたんだろう。もしかしたらそんな風に思っていたのは私だけだったのだろうか。

　やっぱりやるなら、ピアノかな！？

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Musical Instrument

　I wish I had learned to play one musical instrument. It’s not too late,” I hear from somewhere, but there are too many other things I want to do right now to think twice. Maybe I should try it when I’ve done so much that I really don’t have anything else to do, and when I have a little more time to spare. Maybe even after I retire. Moving my fingers to the rhythm seems like it would be good for preventing blur. I think it is a challenge within the range of self-satisfaction, without thinking about whether I am good at it or not, or whether I want to play it for others. It is something to look forward to.

　I failed at guitar when I was younger. I stopped playing before I got into it, so I have not considered or reflected on what went wrong, but at any rate, I definitely lacked motivation and perseverance. It might have been different if I had taken lessons from a teacher, but I had no idea that my parents would pay for my hobby. Just because they bought me a folk guitar, I think it was already quite extravagant.
　Practicing was somehow not fun. There was no way I could do it from the beginning, but if I found it interesting even if I couldn’t do it, I would be easily hooked, so I let myself go with the flow, hoping for the best, but it was still no good. I don’t remember it well anymore, but I may have been at a loss because I couldn’t do it too well. I just couldn’t get a good grip on F. Now that I think about it, I wonder if I was exerting too much force. The skin on the fingertips of my left hand had thickened, and I missed fiddling with it a lot because it bothered me.

　I somehow long to play the piano. Perhaps it is because I could always hear the beautiful sound of a piano from the house next door to the house I lived in when I was a small child. The neighbor’s wife was a piano teacher, as I recall, and she was very elegant. At that time, it was much rarer for boys to play the piano than it is now, and although I had a yearning for it, I had never even thought of doing it myself. There was a discriminatory notion that piano was for women, and I thought to myself, “How can a man play the piano? I was like, “I’m not going to do it. It was not only me, but I think it was a general trend. It sounds silly now, but piano playing was considered something only for rich ladies, and I was probably too high-brow to approach. I wonder if my sense of discrimination was a reaction to that.

　When I was in junior high school, I was surprised when a male classmate started learning the piano at that time. In addition to the aforementioned background of the times, we also had the unfounded and electoralistic notion that piano lessons should be started at the age of 3 or 4. Therefore, I was very uncomfortable with the idea of a boy from an ordinary middle-class family starting piano lessons in junior high school. It’s too late to start now. He was told, “It’s too late for you to start now. You won’t get good at it anyway,” as if he had been looked down upon from the beginning. I was one of them. Now that I think about it, it may have been because I was jealous of his attempt to challenge the impossible.
　I always think of him when I imagine trying the piano. He started early, in junior high school, so I’m sure he must have gotten pretty good at it. I wonder where he got the crazy notion that you have to be the best in your field to play the piano. Perhaps I was the only one who thought that way?

　I guess if I had to do it, I’d play the piano!