So my violin professor wants me to keep a diary as I learn the violin, so I decided to turn it into a blog.
It’s been a little over a month since I’ve started playing. Let’s start at the beginning though, the beginning beginning.
Why the violin? I grew up hearing & seeing my mother play the piano, and even learned a little piano when I was younger. But then my mom became ill and had to stop my lessons. I retained the knowledge of reading notes, but lost any remembrance of rhythms. No one in our family has ever played the violin-it has always been piano or organ. My first experience with a violin is holding one for a few moments (I was probably around seven) that one of my half-cousins owned. But even she didn’t play seriously.
Time passed. Private violin lessons are expensive, and it never really crossed my mind to gain an instrument, though I sometimes played around with the piano to amuse myself, learning some Lady Gaga and even I Love the Way You Lie (not for the lyrics, but the song itself). It was wonderful at college because I had access to a bad-boy Steinway (which I called my big, black boyfriend with a bassy voice). One time I even was mistaken for a music major by a professor passing by the room, but I bashfully stood to leave and told him I wasn’t; I was a nursing major (though I was now considering changing to biology). He made the comment that it wasn’t unusual at all for someone in the sciences to also be interested in music. “Many great scientists also had an instrument they played very well,” he said. That truly stuck with me, and it started to grow.
After I changed majors, I still dreamed about advancing with an instrument. I liked the piano, but I also found it restricting physically-I wanted to be able to move my whole body with the music; I’m “high-strung” (haha) and wanted something that could match my energy. That past summer, the brother of my boyfriend at the time let me hold his violin, showing me proper technique and even some fingering. Even though it lasted just a few minutes, ever since then I wanted to do it again. I wanted to play violin.
Then, when signing up for spring semester classes, I hesitantly asked my adviser if it would be possible for me to take violin lessons-did they offer that at our college? She immediately called the music department and found out that I could. and I couldn’t believe it. What was I doing-I knew practically nothing of music. And yet I did it.
Why the violin?
There are not many ways that one can let one’s soul pour out so untainted as through the violin. So much had changed in the past semester-my boyfriend breaking up with me and consequently losing a very close friend, one of my good friend’s fiancee discovering he has cancer, two good friends of mine breaking up as well-I couldn’t take it, couldn’t focus long enough to write any poetry for finding any hope of releasing this great amount of pain. Violin is the only instrument that will let someone else hear your heart scream.
Praise God for this opportunity of learning the violin-I am loving every minute of it.
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