I'm 10 weeks in to learning the violin. My family has suffered through hundreds of agonizing iterations of 'Twinkle, Twinkle' and our dog is experiencing this pain at frequencies I can only imagine.
My mom came to visit and asked, "Why the violin? What are you hoping to do with it?"
I shrugged and replied, "Maybe play in an orchestra someday."
While that is a real answer and a daydream I haven't dared yet to form in to a goal, her question left me thinking.
Music: It tickles a part of my brain that I don't use in any other part of my life.
Music: It is a dance of challenge and reward that I thrived on when I was flying, and experience occasionally in the gym.
Music: There are days I can feel it reverberate in my heart!
Musicians: We come from completely different backgrounds and meet on a common day, at a certain time, in a shared key.
Ms. MaryAnn, the fiddler, is no exception to the music teachers that have formed a cast of characters in my life.
When I was twelve I rode my bike to a man's apartment in Las Vegas (yes, take that in) where he had two bedrooms: one for his piano studio and the other for his shoes. When I asked - as kids will do - he told me he slept on his fold-out futon in the living room. He figured out that I could fly through Clementi's Sonatinas and dance over scales, and the pieces he taught me I can still sit down and play like no time has passed.
I remember the devastated look on my high school piano teacher's face when she found out I wasn't going to major in music in college. She had brought me from the notes of the sonatinas to forming music, with all of its varying feeling and tempo and volume. One day I pointed out to her that the second movement of Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique had been turned in to a Billy Joel song. I never did finish that piece before going off to the Naval Academy. It's still on my bucket list.
When I was pregnant with my oldest, suspecting that my days of selfishness were soon coming to a long pause, I sent myself back to piano lessons in San Diego. I asked for the best teacher in the county and there I met Celeste in her breezy apartment. (She also had an entire bedroom dedicated to her piano.) Celeste was upset by the military helicopters expending exhaust over the ocean where she swam every morning, so we didn't talk much about what I did for a living and instead focused on her taking me back to basics on musical theory.
Celeste told me, "In any ensemble, the piano player has to be the smartest person in the room."
She had flyers in her living room for piano bar jobs. Had I remained under her tutelage, that was my goal: "Benny and the Jets, key of G." Go.
Piano bar player: Also on the bucket list.
I'll never forget how Celeste approved of my fingernails clacking on the keys. She was proud to be a woman and a professional musician and this came with the territory.
I'll also never forget the day we were discussing D minor and, messing around, I said "It makes me weep."
There we met: From two different worlds, sitting at the piano, we both knew that line from Spinal Tap and thought it was hilarious. This was the laugh that connected us until I moved away.
Present day: Ms. MaryAnn leaves her front door unlocked. When her students arrive they are to silently let themselves in, take off their shoes, and remove their instrument from its case. She'll be there on her perch every time - sitting on a piano bench in front of an upright Yamaha covered in trinkets, a metronome snuggled in between photos and notes from old students. No one can play the bottom dozen piano notes because they hold a variety of writing utensils and sticky notes. In front of her is an aquarium with a turtle in it, the mesh lid doubling as a surface to hold her practice violin and a stack of un-cashed tuition checks. Note: instead of a shoulder rest, the practice violin has a car-wash sponge rubber-banded to it.
Nearby there is a music stand set up at eye level with an open method book that is no longer in print (my take-home version is a pdf). Ms. MaryAnn has been using this book so long that she'll tell me to play, "Page 15, line 6" while she takes care of some bookkeeping and, mid-measure, quips, "I think that note is wrong." She is always correct.
My teacher plays in various professional orchestras and teaches mostly kids who have never read music. We're both learning what I need to practice and where she can speed up my curriculum. We talk a lot about parenting (she is a grandparent now) and how kids these days have no respect. I wonder if she would approve of mine.
This leads me back to "Why the violin? What do I hope to do with it?"
First, I think these relationships with people from completely different backgrounds are important for me - and for everyone. In these conversations we grow and stretch and are forced to respectfully consider another point of view and the lifetime of experiences that formed it.
Second, I'm not so sure that the answer to this question ("why?") is an end state; rather, the goal may be the fruits of the process. (This is a big statement for me, a type-A overachiever addicted to results.)
Keeping my bow perpendicular, my wrist posture correct, and playing the same thing over and over is hard!
When I watch Andrew work at a mindless task with the patience and diligence of a true tradesman, I'm envious that he can do it without going insane. I'm no good at it. But hundreds of iterations of 'Twinkle, Twinkle' are forcing me learn this skill of slowing down and mastering the basics.
Finally, I feel far from finished. When I met MaryAnn, she asked what I do for work. I told her I'm in the Navy and she pragmatically replied, "Is that what you've done with your life?"
I blinked, "well... yes." She blinked and had no further questions about that.
In a season when my impending retirement from the military weighs heavy on my entire family, I must keep this at the forefront of my mind. There is so much beauty and diversity and community outside of the one in which I operate. I can't leave it unexplored.
"... in D minor which is the saddest of all keys ... People weep instantly when they hear it."
Nigel, This is Spinal Tap
----------------------------------------
Shout-out and many thanks to my parents and late Oma, Lola Mae Coates, for my exposure to the arts.
