therapy
I have had a month off the cello.
“I am just as happy writing” I say, blissed out in my fig shade glade, or with the cat on our bed, tip tapping away at something which might be a book one day.
Then we argue.
I take my instrument in my hands and begin to play Bach’s first suite: The unspeakable is spoken, secretly. My bow tells the truth without hurting anyone, without me having to stand naked infront of anyone. The cadences are perfect in their imperfection. The feel of gut beneath horsehair is satisfying yet agonising. The major key is terribly melancholic. I am dancing…. Dancing…
Julian produces a zen lemon.
What do other people do?
posted by ruth at 10:40 PM
8 Comments:
Well, I'm sure my brother would play cello. He says more with his cello than with speech.
Teaching music is my profession so it's rare that I turn to music outside of work hours. Unless I'm feeling sweet nostalgia and want to remember my mother. Then I pick up her violin and play a bit of a Brahms sonata or some Bartok Roumanian Dances.
The sound coming out of her violin is hers :)
(o)
lilli, playing music is my profession; has been for thirty years. Thank God I earn my living doing something I can still turn to. Hence the month off - to refresh my love of it.
You're spot on about the instrument holding the voice of someone departed. That's a lovely image for hearing your mother's voice again.
Aren't words the real source of our miseries? Beeing the words we speak separating us from reality?
Beeing no-words, couldn't it be the source of our real profound happiness?
Looking at the sky, the clouds as they pass by, just beeing aware.
Beeing a witness.
Witnessing the sounds coming out of the cello as hands are gently touching it.
Sensing it's vibrations...
Beeing every movement you and the instrument make, beeing the whole and not just the parts...
Just flowing?
And then we argued.
I turn to music or to knitting, and sometimes to writing to myself without any intention of ever sharing. Sometimes I also go for a walk or a run. Anyway, it is always a solitary, cative occuptaion I turn to.
(I often wish I had that one love in my life, like your cello, or someone else's painting or... I don't. Too many things in my life)
I dance.
Or sing.
The feeling is.
I was just going over the galleys for my novel. A scene that stood out was one in which my main character, a violinist, seeks solace and peace in her instrument
just as you did. I envied her. The ability to create a mood, to change an environment with your own hands is uniquely wonderful.
I walk; either uphill to the forest, or down through the city to the river. One of the few things I miss from London is Hampstead Heath.
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