A rainy Saturday night with nothing better to do, so I decide to make use of the video function on my camera and record myself playing the cello... This was, by turns, a novelty, somewhat sobering, and ultimately quite instructive. And will make a good virtual postcard to send to my parents, who have never heard anything of the new hobby other than my raving about it.
The first attempt was truly terrible. None of the notes seemed joined up. And when you correct yourself while playing, it's as if you only hear the corrected version--the one that was in your head all along anyway--whereas this, oh wisdom of ages, is not what the recording apparatus hears. Nor what we hear when we listen the apparatus's recording, oh no. My first reaction was one of embarrassment. (Embarrassment has been a preoccupation of the pen lately, as well as pertaining momentarily to the cello: I've been trying to turn visceral cringe into discursive analysis to describe that awful sense of embarrassment we often experience on seeing Dostoevsky's characters conduct themselves so appallingly, careering towards inevitable breaking points in front of the motley crowds that fill the drawing rooms and dachas and--speaking of music--would-be decorous concert venues of The Idiot)
Darwin concluded The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) with a chapter on blushing, and observed that man does not blush before God, but only before his fellow men. Well, there were no fellow men (the long-suffering neighbours were away) to hear these efforts, but if I didn't blush, I certainly cringed. It wasn't that I was under delusions as to the truth of the cello-playing matter, but for just an instant I felt a touch foolish for investing so much time, so much earnestness, so much enthusiasm...to produce such fragile results! (Especially when there are things like finishing the dissertation and finding gainful employment to focus one's energies upon). But those thoughts quickly vanished, for nothing detracts from the enjoyment of the process, the small wonders it yields to me, or all the humility and dignity involved in the well-meant efforts (all of which are more of a strength-giving solace than distraction, I maintain, in the face of the finding gainful employment trials). My friends' good-natured enthusiasm when I posted the video on my facebook page was quite touching.
Forcing myself to watch the first clip again, though, I could see, for the first time really, that my arms and hands were definitely not doing the things they were supposed to be doing, the things my teacher kept on about. It hardly needs saying, but, somewhat like Olympic gymnastics or triple-axle-double-toeloop combos, this cello malarky is not as easy as it looks, folks... There are a million different things that can be just not quite right...nuances of postion, motion, tension. So I tried again, again and again...trying to correct some of the things that looked so wrong. Definitely didn't catch them all, but my suddenly oh so long arm no longer looks like it's floating around in space quite so wildly, and dropping my elbow seemed like it made for better connection with the strings. At the next day's lesson Matthew proclaimed he detected a new kind of consciousness in the connection to and control over my bow arm -- this can only be good, surely! And in the meantime, live in my kitchen, complete with wonky rhythms, awkwardnesses and general unrefinement of sound is a subsequent, marginally improved take of the Arioso from Bach's Cantata #156...
(it was not deliberate to chop my head out of the frame; as the amateur improves, so will we endeavour to improve our command of the technology)
Showing posts with label Dostoevsky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dostoevsky. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Before the Cello
In February 2008 I went—reluctantly and too warmly dressed— to a party hosted by a fellow graduate student in her small Berkeley apartment. The party was very dark, and very awkward. It is highly likely, though, that my memories of both the lighting and the social flow speak only for my own experience; this was, for me, a period of increasing darkness of mood and awkwardness in thought and body. Despairing in my inability to successfully join any enjoyable conversation, I stood apart at one side, feeling horribly oppressed by the room but hopelessly distant from its partying.
I never quite figured out who he was, or whom he was at the party with, but a man who was significantly older than any of the hip, huddled, or minimalistly dancing (as space and style dictated) grad students introduced himself to me, thorough his thick Russian accent and with disarming brevity, as, simply, a Jew. We chatted briefly—also somewhat awkwardly—about Russian literature. He liked Isaac Babel. Then, out of nowhere, he asked me, “Do you play the cello?” “No!” I exclaimed, sounding, I fear, somewhat affronted. “You have a voice like the voice of a cello,” he stated. The conversation ended, and I left the party shortly afterwards.
Now, I am certainly not claiming anything profoundly meaningful about this scene. (It is said, incidentally, that the cello possesses a range closest of all instruments to that of the human voice). Depending on your sensibility, the scene may seem either enigmatic, romantic, cheesy, or banal. I present it, though, merely as a fact. It was certainly not an omen; as inclined as I may be to perceive literariness in life, the incongruous party guest and his question were not an omen foreshadowing my future fate with the cello in the same way as, say, the unfortunate railway worker falling onto the train tracks was for Anna Karenina. No, the novelist and the narrative we need here is a different one. This was an instance of the gradual accumulation of consciousness around an idea, this was Raskolnikov overhearing words in the tavern, his thoughts of murdering the old woman gaining momentum, not implanted from without, but nourished by an exchange between self and world. There is no real identifiable beginning of the idea (mine was more harmless than Raskolnikov's, it should be added)—but there are moments when consciousness becomes crystallized in some newly knowable form, perhaps not yet articulable as such, but then the sifting brings the idea—that had long been present—closer to the surface: I wanted to play the cello.
The idea stayed dormant for some time. The semester pressed on. It is not at all my intention to dwell on the reasons for and nature of the slowed, hunched, dark period of depression that blighted it (which was, thankfully, brief and relatively mild). One detail from that time, though, I will mention, in as much as it pertains to music. Near the low-point of this period, I went to to hear the San Francisco Symphony—usually an experience from which I would derive great pleasure. They were playing Mozart. I barely heard the music: a numbing tension stretched and snapped my attention, leaving only its frayed ends, not fine enough for perception or pleasure. Only later, on checklists of symptoms for depression did I come across “ahedonia: an inability to experience pleasurable emotions from normally pleasurable events.”
A few months later, circumstances, on many fronts, had changed for the better, and I was more or less restored to my old self. Some mild medication had helped make things manageable more quickly—helped me both deal with the external challenges and tend to the internal sore spots more level-headedly, and I am glad that option was available. I was left with a vague but strong feeling, however, that what had really come out of joint in the past months was the relationship between mind and body, that this was the rift which needed healing, and that this was something which would not be achieved through drugs.
In the meantime, consciousness of my desire to play the cello received two more catalysts in its crystallization: I happened to pay a visit on two Berkeley professors who had been spending the year in Paris. In their apartment were the stringed instruments that one of them and their three children played. I had never seen stringed instruments at rest, as it were, just hanging out as part of people’s lives and homes, and I thought how much I’d like one to be part of my life too. But surely it was too late…you had to start playing as a child, right? Then, a dear friend from Finland told me all about how she had joined a flute class for adults in Helsinki…I didn’t mention my cello-yearning in this conversation, but made some silent resolutions.
Music, I felt, still vaguely but with conviction, could be the way to heal the rift between mind and body.
I returned to Berkeley in August, did a small amount of internet research to establish that adult beginners on stringed instruments did in fact exist, that it was possible and affordable to rent a cello, and to identify a teacher on the ever-ready Craig's List. I had my first cello lesson on 1st September 2008.
I never quite figured out who he was, or whom he was at the party with, but a man who was significantly older than any of the hip, huddled, or minimalistly dancing (as space and style dictated) grad students introduced himself to me, thorough his thick Russian accent and with disarming brevity, as, simply, a Jew. We chatted briefly—also somewhat awkwardly—about Russian literature. He liked Isaac Babel. Then, out of nowhere, he asked me, “Do you play the cello?” “No!” I exclaimed, sounding, I fear, somewhat affronted. “You have a voice like the voice of a cello,” he stated. The conversation ended, and I left the party shortly afterwards.
Now, I am certainly not claiming anything profoundly meaningful about this scene. (It is said, incidentally, that the cello possesses a range closest of all instruments to that of the human voice). Depending on your sensibility, the scene may seem either enigmatic, romantic, cheesy, or banal. I present it, though, merely as a fact. It was certainly not an omen; as inclined as I may be to perceive literariness in life, the incongruous party guest and his question were not an omen foreshadowing my future fate with the cello in the same way as, say, the unfortunate railway worker falling onto the train tracks was for Anna Karenina. No, the novelist and the narrative we need here is a different one. This was an instance of the gradual accumulation of consciousness around an idea, this was Raskolnikov overhearing words in the tavern, his thoughts of murdering the old woman gaining momentum, not implanted from without, but nourished by an exchange between self and world. There is no real identifiable beginning of the idea (mine was more harmless than Raskolnikov's, it should be added)—but there are moments when consciousness becomes crystallized in some newly knowable form, perhaps not yet articulable as such, but then the sifting brings the idea—that had long been present—closer to the surface: I wanted to play the cello.
The idea stayed dormant for some time. The semester pressed on. It is not at all my intention to dwell on the reasons for and nature of the slowed, hunched, dark period of depression that blighted it (which was, thankfully, brief and relatively mild). One detail from that time, though, I will mention, in as much as it pertains to music. Near the low-point of this period, I went to to hear the San Francisco Symphony—usually an experience from which I would derive great pleasure. They were playing Mozart. I barely heard the music: a numbing tension stretched and snapped my attention, leaving only its frayed ends, not fine enough for perception or pleasure. Only later, on checklists of symptoms for depression did I come across “ahedonia: an inability to experience pleasurable emotions from normally pleasurable events.”
A few months later, circumstances, on many fronts, had changed for the better, and I was more or less restored to my old self. Some mild medication had helped make things manageable more quickly—helped me both deal with the external challenges and tend to the internal sore spots more level-headedly, and I am glad that option was available. I was left with a vague but strong feeling, however, that what had really come out of joint in the past months was the relationship between mind and body, that this was the rift which needed healing, and that this was something which would not be achieved through drugs.
In the meantime, consciousness of my desire to play the cello received two more catalysts in its crystallization: I happened to pay a visit on two Berkeley professors who had been spending the year in Paris. In their apartment were the stringed instruments that one of them and their three children played. I had never seen stringed instruments at rest, as it were, just hanging out as part of people’s lives and homes, and I thought how much I’d like one to be part of my life too. But surely it was too late…you had to start playing as a child, right? Then, a dear friend from Finland told me all about how she had joined a flute class for adults in Helsinki…I didn’t mention my cello-yearning in this conversation, but made some silent resolutions.
Music, I felt, still vaguely but with conviction, could be the way to heal the rift between mind and body.
I returned to Berkeley in August, did a small amount of internet research to establish that adult beginners on stringed instruments did in fact exist, that it was possible and affordable to rent a cello, and to identify a teacher on the ever-ready Craig's List. I had my first cello lesson on 1st September 2008.
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