On New Years Eve 2024 at 1am I was playing piano alone in my living room. The room was dark. Only the lamp illuminating the piano was on. Headphones on and the last glass of Champagne stood just within reach on a small cupboard next to the piano.
Over the past couple of months the only stable thing in my life had been playing my piano in the evenings. My world for the past 3 months had been rocked by a terrible illness hitting a family member. And I couldn’t sleep.
As a kid I was trained in classical piano from about age 6 to age 15. Me and my best friend were battling who was best and at times played 4 hands piano. I played recitals at the school. I liked it. I was good at it. I played Clair de Lune at family parties, I remember talking with my mom about going to the conservatory after high school. But then I remember starting 9th grade and I remember I thought that I needed to “make time for my studies” so I decided to quit. That took me down what could look like a 27 year long detour. Or maybe this is the detour?
At approx 1 am on January 1 2025 I made a promise to myself that I would play piano every day for at least 15mins throughout 2025. I would learn to play Chopin Nocturne Op 9 no. 2 over the next year and I started learning it that night.
Instagram post from that moment: https://www.instagram.com/p/DEQtQ41sFBQ/?utm_source=ig_embed
Instagram post from that moment: https://www.instagram.com/p/DEQtQ41sFBQ/?utm_source=ig_embed
The Soldier
In November 1944, Warsaw lay in ruins. A Polish-Jewish pianist named Władysław Szpilman was hiding in an abandoned building, starving, unwashed for months, having survived on scraps for over a year. He heard footsteps. A German officer appeared. Szpilman braced for a blow or a gunshot.
Instead the officer asked his profession.
“Pianist,” Szpilman said.
The officer led him to a battered, out-of-tune piano and told him to play. Szpilman - barely able to stand - sat down and played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor. The same piece he had played live on Polish Radio the day Germany invaded Warsaw five years earlier.
That scene. Szpilman sitting at the piano. Staring death in the face. That’s how I felt that night (even though I’m fortunately not a Jewish soldier during WWII). I felt like I had to play piano to save my life. I couldn’t explain it at the time. It just felt right. It felt like something I had to do.
Szpilman had no choice. But the officer listened. Then helped him hide. Brought him food and a coat for weeks until the Germans retreated from Warsaw. The music saved his life.
Caption: My January 2026 version of Chopin Nocturne Op 9, no 2 without pedal due to my simple current piano situation.
Today in 2026 I'm writing this from the middle of it, not the end. Sick with a stress diagnosis. Piano is still the only thing that makes sense. I very literally feel like I would not have survived the past year without my piano to escape into. And today it is the only thing I can do. This is a very weird thing for someone like me to say.
Throughout my entire life I’ve been driven by logic. I became an engineer, because I like(d?) computers. I took a PhD, because I wanted to work in the space industry. Then realised I didn’t want to work in academia, so then I focussed on entrepreneurship because I wanted to make a difference (or at least feel I did). Then I started companies to feel I made that difference. And now after just declaring one of the companies bankrupt I’m left wondering - what the hell did I do all this for?
Playing piano has no logic. I make the air molecules vibrate with somewhat similar frequencies as countless other people have done when they’ve played that Chopin Nocturne. There’s no inherent career goal. Nowhere to get to. There’s only the act of learning how to get air molecules to vibrate at specific frequencies over time in a certain way that some guy in the 19th century did for the first time. There’s absolutely no inherent logic to that. There’s no logic to why I’m drawn to it. No logic to why I do this. No career. No next step. There’s just learning. Learning to master the banging of wooden hammer on strings (or even simulations of wooden hammers banging on strings).
And this absence of logic is weirdly liberating.
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