me at 8ish, playing at my Grandma's house.
Today, I played my violin.
Now, if an average person were to tell you that, it wouldn't be a big thing. Ooh, yippee, you practiced your violin. You play violin. You are a violin player. This is anticipated.
With me, not so much. I started playing violin when I was 7. Years of exams with the Royal Conservatory, lessons with everyone from incense-burning hippies to gruff chain-smoking 80 year old Russians to dramatic absentminded Quebecers followed. I had calluses on my fingers and a permanent divot in my right thumb where it squeezed against the frog of my bow when I played.
...I haven't touched my violin in 2 years.
Well, that's not completely true...I played Pachabel's Canon (yawn) at my cousin's wedding last year. But I haven't really touched it. Held it in my hands, felt the curves in the wood and appreciated the blemishes from hitting music stands when I swayed too much playing a concerto. I haven't played it with love, rosined my bow to the tune of a song in my head. I haven't played with vibrato, feeling my fingers sway, jump and dance along the fingerboard...until today.
Today, I rosined. Today, I held my violin in my hands for the first time since I moved to California and truly played. I just sat for an hour and made music by myself downstairs until my fingers hurt, because the calluses are long gone.
I played the old songs and was immediately back in Sylvie's cramped lesson room, hearing her yell "MORE BOW, S'IL VOUS PLAIT." Or I was transported to Mr. Gumenyuk's stuffy, too-hot classroom above the church. I could smell the cigarettes. I knew which songs were his because he never touched the music with a pencil, except to change some fingerings here or there. He was a jerk, but he tought me to play. After learning with him I had a very stiff classical style, but Sylvie warmed it up in her melodramatic, romantic French way. She was a professional Tango violinist as well as an orchestral player, so her style was way more dynamic.
Now, if I had kept playing, my style could have been my own, rather than a blend of theirs. But I couldn't do it. When we moved to California, I couldn't bring myself to open the case. It felt foreign to me now, this instrument I had loved so much. I almost felt like I was betraying my old self by not doing it anymore, but I was convinced I didn't like it anymore, that the stress of it all had taken a toll on me.
And it had taken a toll on me. I didn't love it anymore for the last 8 months of playing before we moved. I kept fainting during lessons, and I barely practiced. I was a theatre kid now, attending art school, and I blamed my mother for forcing me to practice and go to lessons. But was it really the violin, or was it the stress of an imminent move to California plus my teacher's ever-growing, ever-strict expectations that pissed me off?
I'll never know for sure, but today's playing was monumental for me. It was difficult. It's not easy to just waltz up and dig into something you haven't experienced in what feels like a million years. But it was so healing. I think this summer I will rekindle my relationship with my violin. It won't be the same, like all relationships that take a two-year break...but I feel like it can grow back. I never want to take another violin lesson. I want this to be on my terms. But I feel like I can love it again if I try hard enough. Actually...I think it might be not trying at all that brings back the love. No stress, no expectations, just me and Seitz, Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi hanging out and making music.
love,
me.
P.S. I'd forgotten how magical my violin case smells. My favourite thing used to be that even after years and years of owning my own instrument, the case still smelled of Ifshin Violins in Berkeley, which is where I bought him (my violin is a boy. Mom doesn't get that, she thinks it should be a girl, but I don't get to choose the gender of my instruments. The piano's a girl, if that makes you feel better.) and the case still smells like that. A blend of rosin and wood and...love. I can't explain it. I don't know if all cases and violin shops smell like that...but mine has always smelled of Ifshin, and it still does.
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