.authored by something.of.substance.
.feel the music.
I wasn’t sure if this would be considered a memoir. It is not a poem nor a story, but a descriptive thought on musical expression. What I talk about is beautiful to me, but not in a way necessarily knowable by others. I decided, in the end, to make it a short Something.
This piece has a quality of the metaphysical about it, but what started the process of writing this letter was the idea of something very solid and very real.
“Today, I had a very visceral experience while listening to music. I found a copy of Pachelbel’s Canon in D that I adore. Being one of the most-overplayed songs in the history of life, I don’t often gravitate towards Canon when I’m in the mood for classical music. But, today, I gave it a try; I was in the mood. While listening to the sound of the 1st violin cleanly accentuate the scales and arpeggios on the D chord, I remembered music. I closed my eyes so that I would have nothing to distract me from the intricate tonal harmonies. I, once again, felt the violin in my left hand. I felt my palm slide up the neck toward the nuts. I felt my fingers close around the strings in first position. I felt the tips of my fingers pressing the steel strings into the wooden neck. I remembered the way the bow fit into my right hand: pinky on the frog, thumb supporting the weight, fingers and wrist flexing just enough to draw it across the strings.
I imagined myself sweeping the rosined bow across the steel, the sticky powder simultaneously grabbing the corrugated strings and flaking into a white cloud over the bridge of the instrument. I felt that violin become a part of me once again. And, then, I began to cry. Silently, tears streamed down both sides of my face and my imaginary violin faded. I opened my eyes and it was gone. I was once again without an instrument of expression.
I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much is missing from my life. There is a hole in my heart where music used to be and it is threatening to swallow me whole. I can’t talk about music anymore. All I feel is the emptiness where it once lived. What was once my religion- my very reason for living- exists now only in my memory. I don’t want it there, but the outlets for it have, at least in the present moment, diminished.
Utilizing an instrument as expression is critical for me. You’ve never seen me perform and so I don’t expect you to understand the transformative power it has over me. I become one with my instrument. I rock and sway in time to the count. I become the melody or the harmony I am providing. I dwell, somewhere, within that sound.
Writing is important to me. However, it is just words. There is only so much expression one can tangibly convey. Whole shades of meaning are often lost. Even the most adeptly skilled writers cannot transcend the physicality of writing into an emotion or mentality all of the time. Words don’t contain feelings.
It is because I have been so privileged to be immersed in sound that I understand how very little I can say. My relationship to music is intimate, perhaps more so than many people’s relationship to God or to another. Having those instruments was the only way I could express, truly, what I felt. And, though these words are a substitute, they are a poor one. I am often lost in translation.
Untranslatable is how I feel in-person. In those moments when I interact one-on-one with another individual, I often find myself closed off. It is not that I feel insecure or jaded or worried. Simply stated, I feel dull. I hear the music in my mind. I feel the pulse in my heart. I know that whatever I say is only half of the meaning. In this sense, I feel I’m not being true to myself. I’m speaking through that hole in my heart rather than from it. And, I wonder if I’m not cheating the person with whom I’m conversing of any genuine sense of me. But, put an instrument in my hand and I can encompass my thoughts, succinctly, in a gilded cage of sound.
I wish I could give that cage to you so that you may open it and really know who I am.”
