Student Dreams of Becoming Concert Violinist

Yesterday I was walking down Nicollet Mall and passed a street musician, a violinist, who was playing the song I played for my recital senior year of high school. I think it was Allegro, by...Bach? It was one of those songs where the notes were so small I had to blow the music up 150% to practice it. As I continued walking the half mile to my car, I began to feel nostalgic for those days, and was trying to think of every recital piece I had ever played. I could only think of my first one (Puff, the Magic Dragon) and my last one (above). I can't remember my piano recital pieces, either, except one year I did Fur Elise. I only took three years of piano lessons and was never very good. But I took many years of violin lessons and now of course I wish I had my violin again...but when will I play it? I bought an old grand piano a year ago and sit down to play it about once a month. I never played in college, even though, as Angela can attest, I had a whole musical instrument collection stashed under my bed. I had the instruments I could play (violin & trumpet), what I thought I could play (guitar & harmonica), and what I thought I could pick up quickly with just a little practice and, you know, probably master by the end of the year (mandolin & banjo). Angela and I climbed to the top of Fergusson Hall with the violin and banjo and serenaded passersby. It was hilarious, I'm sure people thought we were just drunk. Anyway, after moving the instruments from place to place, and never playing them, I decided to just park them at mom & dad's house. After thinking about these things and feeling all nostalgic, I arrived home last night and announced to Shad that I was going to join my school's orchestra. He just smiled.

So of course this leads to a sort of sadness. Were all those years of lessons just wasted? It turns out that many people have had some sort of musical lessons in their life, but to no great end. The instrument gets stuck under a bed somewhere, if they still have it at all. We had a dinner party a few months ago, and by the end of the night we'd all had plenty to drink and decided that everyone needed to perform the one piano piece they could play. Everyone has the one piece, right? Even if it's chopsticks? It was a fun little recital, and since everyone was drunk, those who normally played well were pretty bad, and those who couldn't really play didn't sound so bad at all. It was like that Kurt Vonnegut story where everyone needed to be equal so the ballerina had to dance with a weight tied around herself, etc. Well, okay, it wasn't really like that at all.

I just got a voicemail message from one my high school buddies who I haven't talked to in about seven years. We used to hang out all the time back then. He said he was just thinking about me and wanted to see what was going on. Well, that's neat. I guess I'll call him back now...