I just wrote this in about 10 minutes and wanted to know if I should continue working on it or scrap it all together.. let me know what you think! Thanks =)
Ok, that's me. That obnoxious teenager who pulls up next to you at a red light. Rattling your car with my blasting bass, to the beat of... no, it's not a rap song. It's Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony.
Maybe that's me, seven years ago. The timid girl in the back of her fourth grade music class. Writing down the homework assignment to create a CD to share with the class. Going home to put on the playlist something along the lines of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Pachelbel's Canon. Stuck in a rut. Debating over whether the other kids would appreciate my newfound enthusiasm for a song I had heard that sounded like no other I had ever heard before.
Somehow, that's me, drawing the bow across the string. Attempting to recreate the Pachelbel's Canon I had first heard only one year ago using the only four notes I knew: A, D, G, and C. The viola. A viola. How it was different from a violin, I didn't know, but the line to try it out was shorter.
That's me, practicing in my room at 7:40 pm, right before mom's Adobo chicken and rice dinner is ready. Aware of my first audition for my first real string orchestra, looming. It's the next morning and I walk into a hole-in-the-wall sized room behind the stage of Baldwin-Wallace's Kulas Hall. The fate of my next two years worth of Saturday mornings lie in the hands of this timid man who, to me, resembled a lemur. I play a D major scale, a short dance from my Suzuki book, and an excerpt given to me only shortly before arriving. "You're in," the lemur says.
Sure, that's me. On my first day in my high school's symphony orchestra class, at 7:20 am. A sense of intimidation overwhelms me as I take a seat in the back of the viola section, and I could hardly see over the head of the large boy sitting one stand ahead of me. "D major," says our conductor. A scale I know so well, yet playing for the first time with a full symphony, I forget. I forget and look back at a winds and brass section. I look to my right at the oboe player. How incredible, the first and last time I would ever feel that way playing just a D major scale. The hair never rose on my arm in such a way.
Yeah, that's me. Unpacking three bananas from my tote bag in the claustrophobic practice room in the basement of Severance Hall. Warming up with a D major scale, playing one to a bow. Two to a bow. Three, four, six. Five minutes to 4 and a knock on my door tells me it's time for my audition. I walk on stage, and seven minutes later I walk off. Did I hit that high note in the third movement of my Bach? Did I play E minor or E major? All I remember is the smell of the hall.
Of course, that's me, attempting to explain my ideas. If only I could word my fascination in connecting my science homework to the music world that I know so well. "You see, the atoms, molecules, and electrons are somewhat like the notes," my sister half-heartedly tries to help, "while they make up something bigger, like an organism- the song." Such connections help me remember. Eventually I grow fond of the subject, discovering a world I had never even acknowedged before. A universe full of mysteries and unknown limitations, and I find myself drawing back to music in the curiousity that drives such discovery and wonder- such passion to discover more and learn more. To uncover the unknown.
Right, that's me, a part of something big. Playing something incredible. Something called "Beethoven's Fifth." The way my hair stands up on my arm as the final movement picks up. In such a way only music can. I couldn't tell you how, only why. Why? Because music makes me feel a part of something real, and something I feel is worth living for. Something so closely tethered to every single human being on this planet.
