“Play Me, I’m Yours” Austin, Texas: A project in spontaneous live music

*Edited 4/4/11*

Creative exploits, life pursuits.

In my quest for impulsiveness and joie de vivre in combining my hobbies of music and writing, I find that I often must coax myself into undertaking more spontaneous activities. As a zealous “overthinker” and obsessive planner by nature, these activities are (ironically) not an impulse and are combative to my knee-jerk resistance of change.

However, sometimes you need to just go and do,as I’ve written about before, and have been yearning to do more with my music. In warming myself up to this type of action, I would tell myself, “Oh just practice a bit more and then go play somewhere.” After a while of that, I finally found the chance this weekend.

In my haphazard perusal of Twitter this week, I found that there was a new public art project instated in Austin, Texas near where I live called “Play Me I’m Yours” where pianos had been set in several public areas to be played by anyone freely.

This art project stood out to me in that it is totally public and interactive while also inviting musical creativity as well as amateur input. In this way, the public can build off of their environment and variety in which they live. This event is lasting the entire month of April, and as I’m finding should be my life’s motto: “Do it now or you’ll forget it later,” I decided to go and check it out for myself.

The result is below- including my bit along with the random pedestrians I encountered.

This project has traveled from New York and Australia to the heart of Texas, and is truly an interactive “mini-SXSW” of sorts which I’m glad I witnessed/took part in.