It’s a sad time to be a violin. Mom’s violin, in particular, after she left it in the car for too long in the heat and then played it and the bridge fell over and the soundpost got knocked out. If you recall, this is one of my top fears as a violinist. Mom said the incident was extremely scary. I’m sure it made a sound. What that sound would have been, I don’t even want to imagine.
When I was a kid, I used to hate practicing. I still do, I guess. The thing is that now I don’t have to practice, so sometimes I wish I had external motivation. Violin impacts no real, crucial part of my life, so the reasons for playing it keep getting more loose and vague. The reasons become pathetic little ideas like: I’ve played for so long it’s a shame to let it go to waste, sometimes it’s fun, and I feel like I ought to. None of those are strong enough to convince me to play.
I had a friend, well I guess we’re still technically friends but we haven’t talked in years, that also plays violin but like plays violin. Professionally. And I tell you, it’s like we don’t even play the same instrument. Hers sounds like a beautiful silky, deep, rich sound, and mine is whiny and squeaky in comparison. Is the truth that I need to work on my intonation and resonance and stuff - or is there some secret violin talent I’ve been denied? Even if we both just played, like, open A string, it would sound like a toddler vs. an actual violin player.
For my purposes, which mainly don’t exist, it’s nothing to lose sleep over. But if there was a way to play like that, I sort of wish I could do it.
In most orchestras I’ve been in, there’s been a “violin diva.” I mean diva as in show-off, not in a feminine type of way especially since every single diva has been male. Not to make it seem like they’re exclusively male, just that that’s what has been my experience. They always play flourishly and show-offy in the rest times when the conductor stops the whole show to correct details. This tends to piss the conductors off because it’s a hard and fast rule that when the conductor is talking there should be no “noodling.”
And these people seem to be professional noodlers, always up high on the E string doing endless flawless arpeggios and little snippets of songs that they seem to have practiced especially to demonstrate their technical skill. I’m not jealous of the divas like I am my friend and her dynamic multifaceted sound. I think diva-ness is a lot easier to achieve than a true, pure sound when playing slowly. You can hide a lot in a glissando, you know what I mean?
But either way, there were several points in my life where it became more and more obvious that violin playing would not be my future. Probably the first hint was the lack of desire to practice. This is most likely not an attitude professional players have. Instead of happily playing for 3-4 hours a day like a budding little prodigy, seven-year-old me would plod through 30 minutes of squawking and call it a day. Mom even used to put a kitchen timer on my music stand so she’d be sure I wasn’t skimping on the whole 30 minute idea.
The second times were when we as a family became pretty heavily involved in the local classical music scene in one particular town we lived in, and I was an average player. Not below average, but just about right on par for where I should have been. This lack of standing out as a star and lack of ambition to stand out as a star were clear foreshadowing to my overall destiny of not being a professional violinist.
Now this is where it gets weird. The third and final nail in the coffin of pretentious in the music industry for me came at the end of high school. I had moved to a new state and joined a different group of classical musicians, this time a little more grown-up and diverse. I took lessons and played in the symphony orchestra of the local community college as a junior and senior in high school. Still plodding along, not ever truly doing more than an hour or so of practicing a day unless under great duress and attempted cramming, I maintained an “average” level.
I had this idea that I would go to art school and be an animator, of all things, when I was in my last year of high school, so I poured all my resources into prepping a portfolio and completing applications for art schools. However, I wasn’t particularly sure why I was choosing art and animation, and listened to endless advice from endless amounts of people. One such well-meaning person urged me to consider violin teaching (we all knew I’d never cut it as a violin performer) as a potential major, and at least apply to a school to see what would happen.
This is such a strange moment in my life that sometimes I feel like I dreamed it all up, but I swear it’s true. I went for an audition at a state college for getting into the music education program. I still shudder at the remembrance of my sight-reading performance. I’m sure the judges still shudder at it as well. Somewhere along the line a private lesson was also arranged for me so the violin professor to meet me and suss out how I would function in the school system. All this was done in the last-minute application fever well after all my art school “early decision” applications had been put in.
Maybe it was my charm or my regimented, uncreative style of violin playing that indicated how little rebellion I had in my soul and how teachable I was, or maybe they had like zero applicants that year, but they accepted me.
To what end? After I got accepted I also got accepted to study animation and panicked and didn’t have enough money for any of the fancy schools and had no clear direction for my future. So around that time I had envisioned a complete future as a violin teacher and it didn’t seem that appealing, plus I had just given a humiliating performance in my community college that my peers made fun of me for. In a way, I packed up my violin and didn’t open it in earnest ever again.
Every once in a while I open it, timidly, with no expectations, and am surprised that I can still play, and that the notes can sound sweet, and that my muscles remember the patterns. Maybe it’s the years of distance from the crash and burn, maybe it's nostalgia, or maybe there is a part of me that loves the violin more than I think I do, but I always come back to it. The past two summers I’ve been playing in orchestras again, just community ones that are low-stakes, and I sometimes entertain the thought of getting back into practicing and private lessons again.
Maybe I will, I think. Maybe maybe maybe.