What Larry Told Me.

I'm going to turn 50 next week.  I've been watching this event come over the horizon, slathering and drooling, and decided recently that the only way to protect myself is to decide that it can't help me.  To prove that point, I've started doing unsupportably crazy things.

One of them was to decide to start violin lessons.

"Have you ever played the violin before," you ask?

Oh hell no.  I had not lifted a violin in my hands, literally, until my first lesson.  I walked in, paid cash to the instructor, and said "Okay, here's the deal.  You'll give me a single first lesson, and at the end, we'll decide if this is something we should never speak of again, or if it looks like it might be worth another lesson, okay?"  Larry, my instructor, nodded seriously.  He told me to pick the violin up.  "Now?  Really?  Pick it up? With my hands?"  We worked our way through issues like "Seriously?  You put your elbow like THAT?" and "God, Larry, this is weirder than golf!"  But at the end of the lesson I'd played a few notes, and he nodded seriously again and said "you should do some more lessons."  So I signed up.

Another crazy thing that I've decided that I should do to stave off the terror that is my 50th birthday is to amp up my martial arts training.  This is, admittedly a loose translation of the term "amp."  But since my son was about 4, which was ever so long ago, I've been one of those Moms who coasted along, coming to classes sometimes (when I wasn't injured or exhausted) to keep faith with my little boy, to support him and show enthusiasm for his martial arts training.  Something changed in that in the last year, and I found myself doing it for me, not for him.  When he and his father went away to Cub Scout camp, I had my first week alone since our boy was conceived -- and I spent half of the evenings I had to myself at the dojo.  I find myself thinking things like "I think maybe I *would* like to be a black belt some day."  Don't tell.

I find myself thinking more and more crazy things, too, like "I should go running."  People who have known me for most of my life know that I won't run if you chase me with a car with a machine gun turret on top.  I have gone running, actually put on running shoes and gone out into the road and run, approximately once per decade.  But I know where my running shoes are now, and occasionally I find myself doing push-ups in my bedroom, when no one is looking.

Now, the intersection of martial arts and violin is a very strange place.  Violin involves holding your arms up in very awkward angles for an extended period of time.  Thank God the thing isn't heavy, but it certainly is awkward, and uses muscles you maybe didn't know you had.  Ironically, martial arts seem to use those same muscles for other purposes.  So when you're alternating between violin and karate nights, things can get a little dicey and hard to explain.

Me:  "Yeah, I'm sorry I had to stop there -- my shoulders are really sore."

Larry (concerned):  "Have you hurt yourself?"

Me:  "No, but I did 50 pushups last night, and and we're doing muay thai elbow strikes and..."

Larry:  (Stares)

It was then that I realized that what I was saying was probably truly completely crazy to him.  He's been a professional musician his entire career.  In that one look, I could see what I was doing through his eyes.  Something insane that could result in broken fingers and arms.  Could derail a career.  Wow.

Later, we were discussing how to hold the bow, and I said "Oh, wait, it's like balancing a foil."

Larry (raising eyebrows):  "A foil?"

Me:  "Ummmm...  Well, I used to be a fencer."

Larry (staring):  "A fencer?"

Me:  "Yeah.  Mostly saber.  It's fun.  Really, handling a weapon is a lot like handling a bow.  You'd really enjoy it.  I bet you'd be good at it.  There's a good school nearby..."

Larry (continues to stare)

It's only been about 2 months since I started my lessons, and I love Larry.  He's so patient, and so direct.  My lesson last week was SO bad, so terribly horribly AWFULLY bad, and at the end, he sighed just a little bit, and said "well, you're still making..." and at this point his voice broke just a little bit ... "progress."  All I could do was laugh.  Eventually, I think I remember that he did too.

The interesting thing is that at the intersection of martial arts and violin, the same themes seem to be coming up, and they both speak to something about me, something deep inside.  Tonight, I walked away with two nuggets that I realized need some deeper reflection.

Tonight's insight:  I'm stingy.

Well, at least that's what Larry said about my bowing.  Nicely, of course.  It came out more like this: "There's a lot of bow there.  You *could* bow with just the little bit in the middle, I suppose, but there's a lot more of it."  We've had this conversation before, and week by week, I work hard, and the next week I'm bowing with, say, 3/4 of an inch instead of 1/2.  I feel self-conscious, like I'm going to look up and everyone on my street will be outside the window, pointing and laughing at my excess.  Larry sighs patiently.  "You know that crunching noise?  That's you stopping the bow.  There's more bow there.  You should use it." This week I worked hard to let it loose, to bow like a naked drunk cheerleader on Spring Break in Florida.  I told Larry I'd been trying hard to really cut loose with my bowing.  Halfway through my lesson, we had this exchange:

Larry:  "You're going to start your bow there?"

Me:  "Yeah, I was thinking I would.  Is it not a good place to start?"

Larry:  "Well, there's a lot of bow between there and the frog.  But that's fine."

Me (moving bow):  "Is this better?"

Larry (looking patient):  "Try it from there."

Something tells me that I still hadn't gone to the right place, but it was better, and he'll take it.

Now, the interesting thing is that I'd had basically the same message delivered in two separate classes at the dojo, just last night.  In the first one, our karate master let 'er rip with a lecture about people who live in little boxes and are constrained in what they'll let themselves do and don't contribute to the world what they could because they're STUCK IN A LITTLE TINY BOX.  And I know that I'm in a class that is 99.8% kids who haven't actually crossed the line into puberty, plus their token middle aged woman -- and somehow I'm pretty sure that it was no accident that some key points were delivered directly at me, with the full force that only a worked-up black belt can deliver.  And later in the evening, he came into the class to show me that I was not completing a move -- I was holding myself back from putting the full force into it.  And as he showed me the difference, in the back of my head I heard a violin bow "crunch."

Somewhere, I must have gotten the lesson that if I can show that I understand it, it's sufficient -- actual execution with verve and gusto and enthusiasm, though -- that's grounds for mocking.  Heaven forbid you do anything beyond "clinically correct."  Enthusiasm, passion?  We can't have that here.

Apparently this will be the year of bringing my inner naked drunk cheerleader to EVERYTHING.  And later, maybe I'll tell you about my realization that if this many people are telling me that I should remember to breathe, maybe there's some merit to it.