The Musical Mind

It might have to do something with being tired or having really cold fingers, but today I couldn't play for the life of me. Both instruments, which use different parts of the body, different technique, and different style just wouldn't work for me. It's hard to believe that they're the same ones I created beautiful melodies with just the other day, but everything's the same except for me.  Either something in my mind was disconnected, or somebody came and replaced my fingers overnight. Probably not the latter, but I still went from being the first violinist who apparently "had gotten a lot better over the year" back to, well, last year.

I know kids, fellow string players, who started out as young, enthusiastic players with lots of energy and a 1/4 size violin. Over the years, or even months, they gradually lost interest, and it became just another chore to practice, which can be a lot to a seven-year-old who doesn't care enough to actually put work into it. I watched as my friends-my inspiration, even-drifted away from the violin. The question always stood there, asked by parents and instructors. Do you want to keep on doing it? Of course I wanted to keep on doing it. It was the violin that mattered, not the kids who played it.

I started playing violin because I wanted to have music in my power. I knew about fiddles from my Little House on the Prairie enthusiasm, and the instrument seemed to easy to me. I was wrong, of course, but I still loved it. Sure, there were friends who influenced me along the way, but they weren't the only reason that I kept on playing. Where I live now there are hardly any string players compared to other places, but I still keep playing no matter how many there are. This question just seems so silly to me. Why would I stop? Does the social part of it matter that much?

When I was younger, I despised practicing sometimes. Like today, there would be times when the bow just wouldn't stay on the string, no matter how much rosin I put on or how firm my grip was, and I would get frustrated and exhausted. I couldn't see it at the time, but I realize now that it wasn't the violin's fault at all. It was me.

A violin is a piece of wood. That's pretty simple to understand. It is a hollowed out piece of wood with pretty designs on it and a few strands of metal stretched over it. By chance, it has the capability to play, but you can't just look at it and will it to do that. You have to have the gift that you put into it, and then produce what's all yours. In the beginning of math class this year all we learned about was input and output, and even though it annoyed me half to death, I'm still making analogies about it. Input: Skill. Output: Music. In sports, the ball won't move just because you want it to,  it's because you have the physical energy to get up and kick the thing. If you have no will to pick up the instrument and play your heart out, do you think your music will be good?

And it's not only physical energy-it's the emotion of it, too. Time and time again I see violinists who just sit there holding the instrument, and bowing without any expression. There might be some vibrato in there, but for the most part it's just notes on a page. Every picture of a famous musician has some expression, not just a piece of wood on a shoulder. Input: Feeling. Output: Enrapturing melodies that resonate in every corner of the building.

When I see other musicians quit, it makes me so sad. I can understand if they hated it the whole time, but if they enjoyed the instrument, or even loved it, at one point, it should stay that way. Anything that could have happened to disrupt that must have been giant-a terrible incident, a broken arm, anything. Or maybe it was just the lost will to continue. When practicing becomes work, and hard labor at that, and the player forgets why he or she even started in the first place, it can't be blamed on the violin. It's the mind, and for the music to work, it must be the musical mind, which is set on one thing: giving it 110%.

By the way, I might be adding more pictures now that I learned how to do it. Enjoy the primitive version of amazing technology (that doesn't even make sense).