My Dysfunction Is My SuperPower

By Lou Pomanti

What makes a 13 year old spend hours in his room lifting licks off his favorite records instead of being outside playing sports with his friends? What makes a 12 year old that previously only listened to pop music start to explore classical music and jazz? Why did I from the ages of 12–17 spend 6 hours a day playing the piano? Every day?

Let's start at the beginning. When I was very little I was classified as a 'hyperactive' child. In the '60s, terms like ADHD didn't exist yet. I was always going off in a million different directions at once. Every report card I ever got said the same thing: “If Louis could learn to focus he would be a much better student.' It was a time of narrow definitions, and a desire for everyone to be 'normal'. They didn't want square pegs in round holes in those days, they wanted square pegs in square holes, the squarer the better. And the parameters of normal were very very thin. I think it really meant students that caused teachers the least amount of trouble.

Then one day I discovered an old piano in my parents' basement that hadn't been touched in years. There were old teach-yourself boogie woogie piano books in the bench and I started to try to figure them out. Then an amazing thing happened. The moment my hands touched the keys, I felt a 'swooosh'...a big transference of energy. All of my lack of focus, all the energy that had been going out in a thousand different directions, suddenly got focused laser-like into playing the piano. Into playing music. I had found something that was so interesting, so pleasing to me, that I wanted to do it ALL the time. You see, people do things that make them feel good. Eat, drink, have sex, watch movies, etc. People who play their instruments all day don't do it because they think they have to. They do it because it makes them feel better. For me, it was very calming to finally have all my thoughts and energies going into one thing instead of a hundred. It relaxed my mind. It made me feel better. I have two older sisters (hence the piano in the basement) who were forced to take piano lessons for years, to no avail. They hated it, and neither one of them ended up being able to play at all. Why? Wrong set of dysfunctions. It didn't make them feel good.

All of this is to say, celebrate your differences. All the things that make you, you. When I'm on the bandstand and look at the other musicians on stage, I think to myself: 'Well, here's a smorgasbord of dysfunction! OCD, ADHD, Autism, etc etc. Myself, I'm OCD, borderline Autistic, and have stuttered most of my life, badly as a kid. I have a theory that one of the reasons I enjoyed playing the piano so much was because when I played music, it just flowed. There were no stutters when I played a melody. It was a beautiful feeling. So the next time you think that you wish you were 'normal'...celebrate yourself, because Your Dysfunction Is Your SuperPower.

Website: loupomanti.com