COMMUNICATIONS

Meetings are often an occasion for disputes. At Nichibunken, too, we used to argue a lot. Less so these days, perhaps.

As it is all water under the bridge, I feel I can now write about these disputatious meetings. When they would reach a standstill, I would often practice playing the piano under the table. I would turn my back on the discussion, and lose myself in my own accomplishments.

I have written before about how, when I became 41, I began to learn the piano, and have now been playing for some thirty years. When I first began practicing, I would learn piano phrases by repeating the movements of my fingers. It was not about understanding the music, but about training my body. So when meetings became bogged down in arguments, I would repeatedly practice these movements. Despite, deep down, feeling a little guilty.

I noticed later, though, that whenever I played the phrases I had practiced, the meeting’s agenda and the discussions it gave rise to would flit across my mind. It is as if my fingers had memorized not only the phrases I was practicing, but also scenes from the meeting. In that sense, you could say that I had not really turned my back on the meeting at all but was really present all along. Such, anyway, is my excuse, a quarter of a century on.