My earliest memory of this, this being of indescribable experience, presence and functionality was on screen. A grainy itty bitty thing very heavy for its compact size. It was a medium for my foray into the world of magic, realism, hope and eventual sorrow. The bane of my existence at one point was the very thing I needed to survive. I didn't own one, my family didn't, no one I knew had any idea of who could possibly own one. Yet, I was enamored by it, saw it daily on screen mostly because I repeated the same show over and over again just to marvel at it.

As serendipity would like a story, my family and I were invited to a church program in a church for the truly wealthy, the bourgeoisie, the upper class. A building so expansive my small mind thought it exhaustive, ornate crown molding on the pillars, beautiful carved long wooden benches in rows, a wide white marbled pulpit was the crowning. It was at this moment I heard it for the first time. To the untrained it can sound shrill, but to me it was ring of a miracle.

For the first time I heard it live, I felt light, as light as a feather, I could imagine a line pulling me off the ground and transporting me to the front of the choir. Mouth agape, I watched the beautifully robed choir sing their hearts out. Enveloping me like syrup entrenching itself to a warm fluffy pancake, so entwined they can never be separated.

That's the story of how an instrument bewitched me. The black and white keys a constant to my waking and sleeping life. In order to feed my obsession I joined the church band. In hindsight, my escape was the start of my downfall, ìf I had stayed would I have had a different story to tell? Would it have been better to never know it? These are questions I would never get to know the answers.

I can only promise you, if I can change one thing in my life, it would be the cursed moment I saw a piano on screen. It signified wealth, power, desire, elegance and magic. I wanted it and I got. Then it ruined me.