“Yeah.”
“And my parents told me if I wanted to succeed I had to be more disciplined?”
“Right.”
“When I was twelve, my parents took me to the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. It was like my biggest dream come true. Rory Wright was nominated for a Grammy that year and I was so excited to go and cheer her on. I saw other musicians I loved on the red carpet, then getting up on stage to accept their award. Some of them sang and got standing ovations from their peers. I wanted that so bad. I wanted to be part of that world. I wanted to be recognized as one of the best.”
“That’s where the Grammy goal comes from.”
“Yes. And when I told my parents that as we drove back to our hotel, they told me I would never be a success in music unless I learned to focus. Unless I learned to be more disciplined and less impulsive. They thought they were being supportive, but the words ‘you’ll never be a success in music unless…’ have stuck in my mind ever since then.”
A hard knot forms in my chest. “You are a success, Nikki. You’re doing what you love and people love your music.”
“I didn’t want to prove my parents right,” she continues. “I wanted to show them I could do it. I wanted to show them that my dream of winning a Grammy wasn’t just a silly fantasy.” Her head drops forward. “And then…”
My heart torques in my chest. “It’s not a silly fantasy. And youcando it.”
“On the plane on the way home from the Grammys, I pulled out a notebook. It was my favorite one, with a cover that looked like antique sheet music. At the top of a page I wrote—no, first I scribbled it—MY PLAN. Then I looked at it and saw how messy it was, so I crossed it out and rewrote it neatly. Then I wroteGOAL:WIN A GRAMMY.”
A rush of empathy has my belly tightening.
“I listed the things I needed to do to be disciplined and focused. I thought a list would help. So I wrote down, in neat bullet points, things like dohomework every night, practice piano two hours every day, go to bed at 9:00 every night, have a skincare routine. And then I thought about being impulsive, and I wrote down… follow the rules, save my money instead of buying more shoes, eat healthy food, and learn time management skills.”
I imagine her as a girl, sitting on the plane, carefully making her lists in her notebook, so earnest and specific. I think about the hurt she hides under that carefree exterior and I hate it but I understand it. Because I’m the same.
“And then I thought more…” She halts, then finishes, “and I wrote down,be perfect.”
“And you’ve been trying to be perfect ever since.”
Her head dips forward but she doesn’t speak.
“What happens when you make a mistake when you’re playing piano?”
She slants me a look, eyebrows pulled together. “I… keep going. I improvise.”
“Okay. Yeah. That’s probably a good way to live your life, right? When you make a mistake, you keep going. You improvise.”
Pursing her lips, she gazes at me for a long moment. “Right.”
“There’s no such thing as perfection, you know.”
“Music. Music is perfection.” She pauses. “No, it’s not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because… music is trying to express the incomprehensible. So we can try, and we might get close, but we’ll never be able to fully articulate what we want to say. There’s always something missing.”
I let that sink into my pea brain. “I think I get that. Like, when I listen to music, sometimes I feel… well, all kinds of stuff, but sometimes it’s a… a yearning feeling.”
“Yes! Because you’re yearning for what’s missing in the music, even though you might not know what it is.”
“I feel that when I listen to your music.”
When I glance sideways at her, she’s sucking on her bottom lip. “Thank you.”
“Can I make a confession?”
“Absolutely,” she says fervently.
