I don’t know if there is a law, axiom, or principle to this effect someplace, but I begin to discover that the best way to develop an active distaste for a thing you love is to make it a full time business. There are others who may feel differently, of course—and I’d like to have some of what they’re having. My experience is that the obligation to do the same thing day after day, even if it involves something wonderful or even ecstatic, evolves into drudgery.
For ten years, I tuned pianos. I started out at age 25 loving the instruments, cherishing the tonal and mechanical quirks of every piano I worked on. Aside from pianos whose actions fell apart in my hands, or whose pinblocks were so worn and dried out as to be unable to hold a tune, I was in love with the beasts. At one point I had seven or eight pianos in my house, adopting them as some people hoard cats. I knew them inside and out.
And I wasn’t even a particularly good technician. I wince at the memory of botching an agraffe repair on a Chickering square grand. (Yes, I was such a piano nut that I even tuned squares.) I took care of and loved the pianos that I rescued and restored at home, and sent them back out into the world. Until, one day, I married a woman with a good job and I realized that I would never have to tune anyone else’s piano again. I can barely begin to convey my relief at this epiphany—thou
