In light of keeping things real here, today was a rough day. I’ve been having some health stuff going on that’s making me nervous, seeing new doctors, could be nothing or could be big somethings and all of this is veiled in a healthy dose of past medical trauma (literally someone did a magazine write up on one of my “horror stories” a couple years back) which just sets me on edge.
With violin, i’ve had a bit of an underlying fear that i’d eventually get to a point where something doesn’t quite click and I form a mental block I can’t get past like I did with math in fourth grade. I have a brain for math, but there’s a few things that had a disconnect that I couldn’t quite communicate well enough to find a way past. (Queue the stereotype of “some of yall didn’t have your dad yelling, “WHATS SEVEN TIMES EIGHT” at the kitchen table while helping you with your math homework and it show” in all its glory, multiply it by most math teachers, it’s a good time.) So far, though, we’ve been able to work through any little hiccups we have come across and i’ve been able to carry on in my learning of this beautiful instrument. Today we got down to more theory nitty-gritty and approached another disconnect.
At first I felt it — that knot in your throat and the weight in your chest where you can feel panic on the brink. If i’m not careful, it’ll make my brain completely shut down, which is where I find I struggle to explain any disconnect in a way that helps us find a way past it. But today I was determined to not let it get the best of me. I was able to recognize it was there, take a moment to gather my thoughts in how to express what my brain was processing and where I wasn’t connecting the dots, and David was able to perfectly interpret everything into something I could understand.
Crisis averted.
What’s more, the knowledge that came out of it on the other side is what I feel to be a huge step in my growth as a violinist. Big things that are essentially stepping stones in your progress with this instrument were laid today and the possibilities from here were opened up for me like a dog going through a door that was opened and running full pelt through a meadow of wildflowers to its hearts content.
We worked more on the Interstellar main theme that we have been playing around with since the beginning, but now we’ve gone to the next step where things get faster and include more strings. It’s a huge challenge, one that is definitely above my current skill set, but one that I feel I can begin attempting. I told David, “once I get this i’m going to feel like such a badass” and I know it to be fact.
Safe to say i’m riding a violin high — one I am extremely grateful to be able to experience, especially with so many challenges in life currently. Violin has given me something even ballet wasn’t fully able to offer. Ballet filled so many holes I had in my life, and effectively losing that was a huge blow, but violin is giving me the fulfillment I have so deeply craved and then some as it’s a whole other world experiencing something to which you are naturally inclined. It’s a beautiful thing when what you’re good at and what you love doing collide, and i’m going to chase this high for the rest of my life.
Another Night at the Barre 