A drawing of a piano / Courtesy of Oancea Elena
I was in the fourth grade when my parents bought me a piano.
I had been taking lessons for two years and wanted one desperately. When it arrived in the room I shared with my brother, I felt as if I had the whole world. Part of the excitement came from the sense of privilege. Few children in my class had a piano at home, and I suddenly became one of them.
The instrument my parents bought was not new. It was a secondhand upright piano. Yet that hardly mattered to me. What mattered was that I finally had a piano to practice on — and, to be honest, to show off to friends who visited me at home.
That sense of pride stayed with me for years. In fact, the piano remained in my childhood room longer than I did. When I left home for college, it stayed. When I graduated from graduate school and started working, it was still there. In 2008, when I was 28, the piano moved to my aunt's apartment in Seoul, where it served her two children, then ages 7 and 10, who were learning to play. Years later, she passed it on to an acquaintance.
Three years ago, another piano entered my life.
An acquaintance of mine who was closing her private piano academy gave me one for my daughter, who was taking lessons. I still remember the excitement in my daughter's eyes when she first saw it. To my surprise, I felt some of the same excitement myself.
But by last autumn, I found myself searching for ways to get rid of it.
The problem was not the instrument. It was the noise. Neighbors living below us repeatedly complained when my daughter practiced. As I began researching ways to sell, I discovered something surprising: The piano no longer holds the status it once did.
A generation ago, a piano was something people wanted to own. Today, many people do not want one — especially a used acoustic piano. They have so many other things to own — a large television, computers and whatnot.
Source: Korea Times News
