The Sound
September 7. Being a cancer patient affords me the opportunity to remember formative moments and important people in my life. I often naturally gravitate to the music school memories and I reflect on how many of my life experiences relate to the moments and people of my years with the sound of the violin.
Present in my memory is day one of music school, violin class. I had started piano with a teacher near my home, perhaps six months earlier. I remember listening to my younger brother's piano class while I read children's versions of classic literature. I probably listened for a year. I don't remember why I wasn't in the class, but I remember my mother's piano and her playing. When I started with the teacher, I remember many tortuous lessons on theory without touching the piano. My brother and I skateboarded to the teacher's house. A neighbour, who was a flute player, mentioned to my parents that he was in the conservatory. Shortly after, I was in my first class.
Bernardo was playing a piece by Boccherini. I was around 7 years old. Bernardo was about a year older than me. Students sat with their violins and books and we could all watch each student's class with the eminent professor. We didn't play in a group. This setting immediately showed me how behind I was in my playing; I reflect now that it was natural to be behind since it was my first day with the violin. My life changed forever after Bernardo's class.
A small girl was next, she played two pieces. The first movement of a sonata by Haendel, and Prima Carezza by C de Crescenzo. A few years ago, I played the latter at the Wellspring Cancer Centre one time that I borrowed a violin that someone had brought to play for us. I was very touched by the gesture of the lady who brought her new violin. She said that it was a dream of hers to learn the instrument and she decided to start now that she was a cancer patient. I noted that she played it without proper tuning and bridge positioning. I borrowed to adjust it and then I asked if I could play it. I related part of the story about this small girl in a few sentences, closed my eyes, and played it for them. My fingers still remembered the piece after so many decades.
Claudia was a year younger and for the next 14 years of music school tormented me with her talent. She was always a few steps ahead of me, no matter how many hours a day I practiced. To me, her playing was the bar to reach, the problem was that the bar kept moving ahead, as it if were permanently in front of me, unreachable because I was perhaps attached to it with an invisible substance that kept pushing it forward.
Reflecting on this in mindfulness group sessions relatively recently, I realized that it was her who assisted in my transformation into a patient competitive perfectionist, which helped me to be very successful in my mainstream school, high school, and engineering school, all which were generally a breeze because I memorized classes so that I didn't have to bother and I could go back to try to catch up to Claudia.
As the years passed, in a season concert, she showed up in the professional orchestra and this tortured me even more. A few years later, I showed up too, but she was in the front chair and I was in the last. I kept catching up to music that she played and etudes and her technique but always months or years behind. The more I tried, the worst I felt, and the more successful in academic activities.
The violin is a life companion, a friend. Producing music with it is a lonesome activity because one has to practice alone and spend most of the day alone, consequently. Decades later, I would continue to practice, particularly when I traveled around Asia. I packed my violin and my Bach book and practiced softly in hotels. I would play in the plaza outside the library and concert hall, across the border from Hong Kong, whenever I could take some time to be alone, which is difficult in Hong Kong.
I treasure a particular memory when, during rehearsals in a competition, we escaped the small hall and found our way stealthily into the large concert hall where the national orchestra was rehearsing Mozart's Jupiter, fourth movement. Claudia and I were young teens and nobody seemed to be bothered by our presence behind the audience seats at the back in the second balcony, just listening. The memory has stayed with me. The sound came from every direction. Mozart wrote notes that he needed and not a single extra note, as a teacher used to say. The moment made an impression on what was possible, on the power of perseverance, on the meaning and purpose of life, no less. Her presence next to me, reassured me that this was The place to be and the purpose of life, to grace the soul with the sound. I knew that she would get there before me, but I knew that I had to work to follow closely. We had traveled to this place a thousand kms and I had stayed in a house alone rehearsing for days until I had to go to the local conservatory for rehearsals and then to the concert hall area. At that time, I moved to another house with a kind distant relative and her mom, Bubba, who hosted me. It was fun to take the elevator to her living room and to have my own room with a view from above; the first time I had lived in a high place. In Asia, I would later live among the clouds, but for now, this was the coolest place on Earth. Prior to the trip, I had rehearsed with another Claudia, a young piano teacher, and prepared for the competition for months. All of this preparation and experiences culminated in the moment when the national orchestra was rehearsing with my friend by my side. The actual competition didn't matter that much.
I have thought for many years that I owe part of my way of doing things to my friend, who tortured me for the 14 years that we were in music school. Then, I went to engineering grad school and shortly after she went to violin grad school in Belgium and we have never met or communicated again. My life changed abruptly from one day to the next as I landed in the new city but I see now, that I always carried Claudia's bar with me, or better said, in front of me. I know that she continued down the sound path because once I saw a program in flemish about a recital she played, but there were no photos or contact information. I asked Bernardo a few years ago if she could trace her but he wasn't successful. I wish that I could find her and write a thank you note about how much she influenced my life. I don't think she knows how much I admired her and followed her sound and how my years in music school helped me in engineering grad school and my profession. The problem, I discovered relatively recently, is that it must have been annoying to be around a perfectionist like me and that I said yes to every challenge as if it had been her next piece of music. These traits work generally well in academia while pursuing lines of research, but not so well in other aspects of life.
It was cancer who finally put a stop to my pursuit of the bar set by Claudia and that eventually brought me to write these lines.
