New Beginnings

A couple of weeks ago, a violin teacher who was in the shop helping a student pick out an instrument asked me whether I play. I get this question a lot, and I gave him my standard response, that I used to but don't so much any more, and that I would like to get back into it at some point. He asked a few more questions about who my teacher had been and what I'd been playing, questions I get a little less frequently but often nonetheless. I figured he was just being friendly and making conversation rather than standing in awkward silence while I switched chinrests from one violin to another, and that probably was a big part of it. But then after I'd finished packing up and ringing up his student's rental, he offered me his number and said he plays in the BSO (the BSO!!!) and to call him if I was interested in taking lessons! I took it as a sign that it's time I pick up violin again, so I called.

And now I have a violin lesson scheduled for next Sunday! Including tonight this gives me exactly 10 nights to practice, if I don't go out at all, but I will go out at least once because a friend's birthday is this weekend. Still, over a week should be plenty of time to prepare myself for a lesson--more time, in fact, than I ever had between lessons back when I was taking them regularly. But here's the thing: back when I was taking lessons regularly was nearly five years ago now, so it's been that long since I've truly practiced. Needless to say, I'm a little anxious about the prospect of going to Symphony Hall to play for a stranger so that he can decide whether or not he'd like to teach me.

Actually, the phrase "a little anxious" doesn't really have the complexity that would be necessary to convey the way I feel about this approaching lesson. I feel excited, definitely, about the possibility of making violin a big part of my life again, and proud of myself for being independently proactive about something that previously (from when I was four until the end of high school) was orchestrated (ha!) by my parents. But I'm also experiencing this flood of insecurities that hadn't occurred to me until it was too late and I had already called the instructor. What if he thinks I'm terrible? What if he thinks I'm not goal-oriented enough, since I just want to play again (and am only taking lessons because I insist on doing things correctly)? Is it presumptuous of me to think that a BSO player's time might be well-spent teaching ME? What if he says my level of playing is not suitable and suggests another teacher? What if I cry?

These are all distinct possibilities. That's why teachers have trial lessons, and reasonably I know this from all my friends who teach private music lessons. Also, I have cried during pretty much every violin lesson I've ever taken--inexplicably--so that's even more likely than being sent to another teacher, and equally embarrassing. But this is an opportunity that was basically handed to me on a silver platter, so I have to take advantage of it. It would be stupid not to. So I'll just keep reminding myself that this was the teacher's suggestion, not mine, and that he already knew it had been years since I'd played when he offered his number, and I'll practice as much as I can in the next 10 days, and then I'll get my butt over to Symphony Hall and play my best and see what happens. Wish me luck!

Poetry

The January 2010 issue of Esquire runs the magazine's ninth "Meaning of Life" feature, this time as a series of interviews with various celebrities who have won awards in the first decade of this millennium. Interestingly, they don't list the interviewers' questions, just (what I imagine are some of) the key celebrity quotes from each conversation.

One page is devoted to Sting, and I bet it could have been more because he seems to have plenty of wit and wisdom to share about life as a pop star, husband, and father. But somehow what stuck with me out of everything he said was this:

"People send me song lyrics all the time. It's difficult. I'm not sure what they want me to do with them. Looking at lyrics without the music is like looking at a one-legged man."

When I read that, I just thought it was a sort of funny, if rather melodramatic, analogy. And then, days later, I remembered it and thought, lyrics without music--that's just a poem. Hasn't anyone who's taken a music theory class been assigned the project of writing the music to a favorite poem? But the more I thought about it the more I came to realize that there is a very distinct difference. When I write something--not something like this, but something fragmentary, which usually occurs to me already formed--I know whether I want it to be a poem or a song. There is something there in poetry that lyrics just don't have. A poem is somehow complete on its own. It has a thread to it already, and doesn't require music to keep it together or to propel you through it. I'm not sure what it is, since both lyrics and poetry that I write tend to share rhymey and rhythmic qualities, but there is definitely something else cohesive that lyrics lack and poems have. I guess Sting's fans are hoping he can fill in the music their words need to become something complete.