A Fiddler Still
Part 4 of A Life in Music
The last few days in my LiveJournal haven't been very happy. So for today, a happier story, of an old love rediscovered, and after years of winter silence, a fiddler's spring. :-)
My father always said that it would come back; that you never really forget, anymore than one can forget how to ride a bicycle. I admit I had my doubts, through all the long years. But as usual, my father was right.
Ten years it had been -- ten years -- since I touched the violin. Yet the music was still there. :-)
And so it was the whole happy gaggle of us had just lumbered back into missysedai's home after a marvelous Tapas dinner at Pocco Piatti, and we'd somehow eventually formed ourselves into two groups -- I don't remember precisely how. There was one group gathered around missysedai's kitchen table, and a second in her living room. I can't remember if we were sitting around and then someone started playing music, or if we had gathered around *because* someone started playing music -- I faintly remember being there already when silmaril mischieviously asked someone to fetch her recorder from her bag, but I can't remember if Breno had already started playing Ernie's violin first. Whatever happened, the musical spark was struck amongst a whole bunch of folks who considered themselves musicians and geeks, and swiftly it all flew up into a merry, joyful, dancing flame of music and song. :-)
And so silmaril played, and Breno played, and we sang. silmaril generously let resonance42 take a turn on the recorder (he plays the recorder, too?!? You know, along with the carillon, the violin, singing, systems administration, speaks at least six different languages, once sat in the highest seat in all of medical student activism, and incidentally was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search winner? Sheesh! :-) ). Ernie had kindly allowed Breno to play Ernie's violin, and then Ernie let resonance42 take a turn on the violin. And then he let me.
It had been more than ten years. And my father was right -- you really don't forget. It was still there.
The last few days in my LiveJournal haven't been very happy. So for today, a happier story, of an old love rediscovered, and after years of winter silence, a fiddler's spring. :-)
My father always said that it would come back; that you never really forget, anymore than one can forget how to ride a bicycle. I admit I had my doubts, through all the long years. But as usual, my father was right.
Ten years it had been -- ten years -- since I touched the violin. Yet the music was still there. :-)
And so it was the whole happy gaggle of us had just lumbered back into missysedai's home after a marvelous Tapas dinner at Pocco Piatti, and we'd somehow eventually formed ourselves into two groups -- I don't remember precisely how. There was one group gathered around missysedai's kitchen table, and a second in her living room. I can't remember if we were sitting around and then someone started playing music, or if we had gathered around *because* someone started playing music -- I faintly remember being there already when silmaril mischieviously asked someone to fetch her recorder from her bag, but I can't remember if Breno had already started playing Ernie's violin first. Whatever happened, the musical spark was struck amongst a whole bunch of folks who considered themselves musicians and geeks, and swiftly it all flew up into a merry, joyful, dancing flame of music and song. :-)
- resonance42 had actually been a biology-music double major back in his Yale days and spent a year studying the Carillon at the Koninklijke Beiaardschool in Belgium, before embarking on the MD/PhD and medical activist paths on which I first met him. culfinriel had graduated with degrees in music from my own undergrad alma-mater -- Northwestern University -- and been a professional opera singer in her life before becoming an eye surgeon. The very first time I met Breno was when he was playing the violin at Thrir Venstri Foetr, the very first night silmaril introduced me to him, to medieval dance, and to Jesse -- who herself was a accomplished pianist. And whether a night before the keyboard or an afternoon painting a bathroom, I've already told many happy stories of music and silmaril.
The songs? We knew them -- from Ren Faires, from medieval reenactment groups, from the SCA and Markland and Quest and in culfinriel's case, from the honest-to-god professional stage. From choirs and groups and impromptu jam sessions from events and firelight circles and autumn afternoons dressed in medival garb -- of the six of us in that living room, I know for a fact five of us were full-blown Rennie/LARPers. And while I'm not sure about culfinriel, the fact we spent the first evening we'd met each other at New Orlean's Commander's Palace on AMA business geeking out on Tolkien has to count for something, and if culfinriel isn't a Rennie yet, she should be -- she'd make a marvelous one. :-)
And so silmaril played, and Breno played, and we sang. silmaril generously let resonance42 take a turn on the recorder (he plays the recorder, too?!? You know, along with the carillon, the violin, singing, systems administration, speaks at least six different languages, once sat in the highest seat in all of medical student activism, and incidentally was a Westinghouse Science Talent Search winner? Sheesh! :-) ). Ernie had kindly allowed Breno to play Ernie's violin, and then Ernie let resonance42 take a turn on the violin. And then he let me.
It had been more than ten years. And my father was right -- you really don't forget. It was still there.
- I wasn't any good, of course. But I was frankly stunned I could still play at all. I literally hadn't touched a violin in more than ten years and when resonance42 handed me Ernie's violin I was honestly pretty frightened to test out just how much -- how little -- of all those years of violin still remained. I honestly thought I would have trouble making any kind of music at all. I don't think I can really describe the complete shock -- and the surge of joy -- when I realized that, even after ten years, I could still actually play.
The last time I touched the violin, oknuinushii and prophetkristy were in junior high. Yet it came back rapidly -- really rapidly, from simpler to harder to harder yet, spilling out of parts of my brain, racing down motor pathways that hadn't lit up since I was in college. I was so happy I spun off at least a dozen melodies from simple to more challenging in a giddy rush, just to see what was still there. I think I played for twenty straight minutes the first time, all in a rush. I still had a piece of Vivaldi's Four Seasons up in muscle memory, still had chunks of my All-State audition pieces -- I sure as hell wasn't going to land any honors orchestra seats in the state I was in, but I was giddily happy just to have them left at all.
And it wasn't just the muscle memory that returned -- it was the ability to think a melody and translate it to the violin, the ear playing, that was still intact, too. I'd completely lost the ability to sight-read music -- I knew that already from my choir work with Cynnabar and the medical school, and that was a big part of why I was convinced and afraid I had lost the majority of my violin work as well. But by some quirk of my own brain, while I'd nearly utterly lost the ability to read sheet music, I'd somehow preserved in large part intact the ability to hum a tune and then play it. I could play Broadway showtunes for Jesse or silmaril to sing along with. I could play melodies on Ernie's violin music I'd only learned since long after I had stopped playing, like the dance tunes from our English Country dances. Or even music that hadn't even been *written* when I last held a violin, like the glorious Two Hornpipes Tortuga jig from the musical score of Pirates of the Carribean: Davy Jones' Locker.
I couldn't play well -- but I could still play. I could still play enough that Breno and silmaril could do a whirling waltz in missysedai's foyer to the Davy Jones fanfare. I could still play enough that Jesse and silmaril and Breno could dance Playford to the music I could make. I could still play well enough that silmaril and I could jam a little together. There's no way in hell I could hold up a candle to what Breno can do, or mavis_maude, or Cyd from MDRF's Cat and the Fiddle Morris. But I didn't expect anything to be left at all. What I've got, I could at least, with a few good days of practice, be good enough for local dance practice. Enough at least to jam for fun with aelkiss and Jesse. I've still got the music. And that makes me very, very, *very* happy.
I don't have my violin with me right now -- it's sitting at home. But I'm certainly going to get it and bring it back to Ann Arbor with me, first chance I get. And I've gotten a lot more efficient -- and a lot more capable of operating on far less sleep -- than I was back in high school and college days, enough that even with the life of a med person I can squeeze bits of mischief now and then, as so many tales this past year have told. There are RenFaires and SCA Baronies near most, if not all, of the academic medical centers at which I'm interviewing -- I know, I've been checking. They'll be people with whom I can dance -- and with some practice and some polish, even play with and for. I've loved music my whole life, loved it with my whole heart even when I set it aside to pursue the battles I chose for my own. I've always been a musician at heart who largely gave it all up to pursue medicine. For ten years it lay silent until I dared to revisit it, and I found that while I did lose a hell of a lot, there's still enough left that, with some hard practice, I might be able to call myself a fiddler still. :-)
And much more than that, to make music and song and dance with friends all as much in love with Polyhymnia's arts as much as I -- that long, happy evening in missysedai's living room shared with close friends, making and sharing the music; that more than anything else is the memory I treasure the most. From the halls of medical activism to the golden lanes of the Renaissance Faire, with friends each and every one deeply treasured; it seems appropriate that it would be among them that the old magic within me would be reawakened. For there is no greater magic in our lives than the love of family, and the warm embrace of special friends. :-)
- Part 5: Fi de tristesse! Vive liesse!