Music has always just been a part of my life. I guess it’s part of pretty much everyone’s, but in my case it has been less ambient and more direct. My mother is a professional musician, by which I mean that she teaches music, and plays with various groups, and music has always been part of her life, both personally and professionally. My father sings (and dances) and plays the flute; my very earliest memories of him, and of songs, are being carried on his shoulder around the kitchen, late at night, while he sang Irish folk music (which, by the way, I now realise is so totally not appropriate for children). My sister inherited my mum’s abilities and plays pretty much everything, and has spent a few years as a Jesus Minstrel, making a joyful noise unto various Sunday school and summer church camp kids around the US and the world.
I’m the one Rice who didn’t inherit any of this. Unlike the rest of my family, I have a voice like a castrated frog, and no especial affinity for instruments. I can read music because I played oboe for about ten years, but I have a very hard time with anything that’s not in treble, or not in oboe range (really high or low notes flummox me). I suppose I was competent at oboe, but never brilliant or anything. I’m very good with rhythms and I did somehow manage to be the one person in the family with perfect pitch, but neither of these things is terribly useful since I can’t really apply it.
If I’d had the native family talent, I would be pursuing professional musical theatre, but I didn’t. (Fortunately, I don’t have a complex about being a director because I failed on stage: I never went for the stage, and when someone pointed out to me that my native instincts and talents were more those of a director, I immediately realised the truth of this statement, which my life has always reflected, and I’m much happier in that capacity. I can direct musicals without having to utter or comprehend a note.) But in spite of this, music’s just something I enjoy. On the heels of one of my massive mental upheavals, precipitated as always by personal crisis, I decided to take up the violin. I put it down after a few months, because I went back to Washington and college and my life and family and just didn’t have the time. Last spring, went it all went caddywampus again, I remembered how much that had helped, so I went out and bought myself a violin here in England. It was what I did last spring and last summer, when I just couldn’t figure out what else to do.
And it worked brilliantly. Not because playing made me particularly happy, but because I had to think about so many other things than the cyclic shit in my head, so it took me away from what was eating me alive. Learning- because I am still very much learning- violin reminds me a lot of when I was first learning to drive, and I was certain I’d never be able to keep all the little things juggling simultaneously in my head. A few hundred thousand miles later, I drive quite without thinking about it, even after two years away from my car. Someday I hope violin will seem that intuitive, but just now it’s trying to remember where my fingers go, and what the notes look and sound like, and the timing, and the pace, and where my bow has to go, and..... Right now, it’s not a very pretty thing.
This is very frustrating for me, because although I probably am way more patient than I think I am, I don’t like being bad at things, at least not things that matter to me. Last year, for example, I was absolutely the worst Frisbee player in Constantine House. No matter, since Frisbee isn’t something I particularly care about. But I live a life very surrounded by musical people. My family back home, yes, but here in England, too. James and Adrienne both sing at near-professional quality (Adrienne was an opera major for a few years), our friend Zac is an honest-to-god prodigy, one of those people who can just play anything and also composes, Charlotte and Kate are both violinists (admittedly out of practice) and Charlotte was once a very serious pianist, and James plays violin all over Yorkshire. So it’s a wee bit intimidating, and depressing, not to be one of the cadre of the gifted. Being in the Tribe is like being in the Rice house: I can wish very much, but I just don’t share that gift.
Tonight is one of the rare nights when I’m home on my own, though (James and Adrienne went to see the new Indiana Jones movie, and I couldn’t care less, so the thought of spending cinema money on it was just not gonna happen), which means I actually had the chance to play. An hour later and my arms are seriously killing me, and my left hand fingers are much the worse for wear. That’s the one real drawback to violin: I am exceedingly vain about my hands, and the thought that I’m ruining them for something I’ll never even be terribly good at it is rather vexing. At this point, though, my pride in my hands is taking a bit of a back seat to my pride over all, because it’s inevitable that someday, someone is going to hear me, and I’d rather it not make them run for cover.
In fact, I know it’s going to be sooner rather than later. James has been trying to get me to play when we go out for folk nights for months, and, proof that I am a fool in more ways than one, I finally caved and told him I would play by the end of the summer. (Actually, I originally said June, but May has been hellish for both of us, so we agreed that a postponement was fair.) Which means I actually have to try to get over my phobia of being heard, and it also means that I have to not totally suck ass by the end of the summer. (For the record, I also hated playing my oboe if it wasn’t in the middle of the band. The one time I tried it at Solo & Ensemble, I had a panic attack and hyperventilated, which is just about the last thing you want to do if you’re getting ready to play an oboe solo.) (I should point out that there is in fact another side to this bargain- James is supposed to have the next chapter of his novel on my desk by August. It gives us an excuse to nag one another into doing the things we both know damn well we should be doing anyway.) Should be an interesting attempt. I’m very big on keeping promises, so I’m not sure what I’ll do if it’s getting to the end of summer and I’m still sounding like a cat in a meat grinder. The thing is, I’m a perfectionist, and I don’t like anyone to be witness to me doing anything that isn’t absolutely spot-on, which is also why it’s an extremely rare thing for me to let someone see my writing. James will probably think it all right- he has a far higher opinion of my playing than I do, but he has a higher opinion of everything I do, so I’m not sure I count him as a reliable gauge. I suppose we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.
Right now, I feel very sorry for our neighbours, who are going to have to suffer through an hour or two of scales and scrapings on a periodic basis. And I feel bad for James and Adrienne, because inevitably I’m going to have to do this when they’re home, which means they will share in the suffering. That is, if I can ever lift my arms again.
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