The cold air was sharp like a B natural in an F major scale. The cloud of my breath mingled with the rosin rising off my violin’s strings. I tapped my foot to keep time and keep the numb of cold away, as my friends and I sat by an empty fountain in the middle of the city with the concrete stretched out around us while stars twinkled above the streetlights. Winter had left the streets sparse and swirling with dust and snowflakes.
This was my first time playing street music, and I liked the way the sounds of my violin seemed to resonate off the atmosphere. Music must belong out here, in the middle of life with applause coming from the window of a condo. And with people stopping their late night walks to dance… with the dust of life joining my own breath and the rosin and music rising off my bow.
My freezing fingers stumble a jig and become clumsy dancers tripping over notes, awkward but joyous. It is 1 a.m.
And I think of what my orchestra director said when I quit: “You will regret it”. He also had said the way to really listen to music was in the dark in stereo with your eyes closed. And I picture him sitting in the dark of his office wearing headphones and leaning back in his desk chair, with his steepled fingers pressed to his forehead.
And I remember when I was in that office auditioning for a chamber orchestra. I was so nervous that the notes came trembling off my violin. My orchestra director stopped me and said, “This is how you have to play: never just pass over one note to get to the next. Play like you are savoring each note, as if you love each note, as if that note is the only one that will ever matter. Linger over the note like you don’t want to leave it.”
I’m not sure exactly why I quit. Maybe practically I just didn’t want to wake up early and play the violin 4 hours every day anymore. There was so much I wanted to do in life, it didn’t’ seem like I had time for that. Or maybe it was because I still felt the sting of missing out on meeting my favorite football player because I went to dress rehearsal instead… since my orchestra director asked me too. And yet only half the other kids were there. But too there was that time when the principal violinist of our orchestra played ObiWan Kenobi’s theme so sweet that my stomach kind of sunk as the melody soared and I realized it would take a lifetime of dedication to learn to play how I really wanted to play… to learn how to really do just one note justice.
So I asked myself in the cold and concrete that night if I did regret it. As I once had lost myself in my music for hours every day, my soul pouring out in the music from the strings. But now I had hardly touched the violin for years, and in that moment playing on the street, it wasn’t just the cold that made my fingers stumble: it was the giving up and forgetting.
But with the next note, I realized that didn’t really matter anymore. What matters is each time you play and each note you play, not all the times and notes you didn’t play. And the last note doesn’t matter, the next note doesn’t matter. What matters is this note here.