Bless me Father, for I have played.

No one has gotten up the balls to tell me not to play piano in the lobby anymore. I play after hours, when only the cleaning staff is here, and I don't even bomb around on it. (No Ben Folds or anything.)

Sometimes I get applause, echoing out to the main atrium where I'm playing. Once I even got a cup of coffee set on the top of the piano for my hard work on the keys. (I use the term "hard work" very loosely here.) But for the most part, I just get dirty looks from the janitor who cleans the ladies' room down one hall.

I don't really care. At least not until someone straight up tells me I can't touch the piano anymore.

I swear to god my blood pressure has gone down 50 points since I started playing every night. And to be honest, I've actually gotten better since I quit back in ninth or tenth grade. I savor the songs more, now knowing how rarely I will get to hear them.

Sure it's probably dull to everyone else. It's about the same five songs I've had memorized since high school, tucked way, way, way back in my memory.

But something else has started happening. I start a song, and then make up the rest of it right there. I know the key, and the sharps and flats. And I just play in harmony, breaking chords up, making my own adjustments to the main melody. It's... really fucking fun. Sorry, F bomb came out of nowhere, I guess. I am loving this new musical thing going on with me. It's so fun to weave a song out of nothing, and to go through all the obligatory codas and bridges.

The trade off is the sound of an amateur, I'm sure. Maybe that's why I get scowled at. Except I totally mix my karaoke versions in with every other structured piece of music I know. So maybe it's more like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde sound coming out of that old Steinway. Particularly creepy when I play so late, that the only lights on are the accent lights over the dark wooden bookcases housing ancient textbooks. A little haze from the Exit signs. A little gloom filtering in from the streetlights over our November streets.

But I would rather plead forgiveness than beg permission to play every night. And even then I don't particularly want forgiveness. Except when it pertains to my sin of quitting music.