I have four big projects right now – being a researcher, being an ICANN director, making sure that OneWebDay has a life of its own, and being a violist.
The viola project is the easiest of the four, because it's the thing I've been doing the longest. This hasn't always been true. I remember when I first tried to play all four open strings on the violin (one at a time, up and down). Very very hard — right hand holding tight to the bow, right thumb locked underneath the bottom part of the bow stick (hard to explain without a picture), feeling of pain in my left shoulder and neck. I remember that when I first started the pads of the fingers on my left hand stung with pain; the topmost string was like a razor. No wonder so many kids quit after a year or so.
I didn't know quitting was an option. So I kept going, and now when I don't play my hands don't feel as useful and the pads on the tips of my left fingers start to ache. I switched to the viola when I was a junior in college because I thought I'd get a better job that way. I've never looked back, and the few times I've played the violin since then I've sounded like a trombone player.
I did get a better job eventually, but as a lawyer and not a violist. About six years after I graduated from law school I started practicing every day again, not the three or four hours a day I'd done in college (not the smartest thing to do in college, by the way), but a solid hour. I'm not sorry that I took the route I did. Musicians don't get treated very well in America (except for a lucky few), and lawyers, amazingly, get paid just for thinking, writing, and talking. What's so hard about that? I remember the first day of my first job after I dropped out of music school. I couldn't believe that they would pay me for sitting in an air-conditioned office and keeping track of pieces of paper. It seemed like a game, a lark, a scam.
Now playing seems like a gift, a lucky thing I get to do that I've done all my life.
I just had to write a note about this post. I started playing the viola in 6th grade; the range of the instrument just sounded and felt richer to me than that of a violin. Ufortunately I could not continue beyond that year. I was playing in the school's six person orchestra — three violins, two violas and a cello — so the school paid for the instruction. But we moved way out into the country and private lessons were too expensive and an hour's drive away.
I remember those first two agonizing weeks all too clearly, it feels like you contorting your neck, shoulder and arm in ways Martha Graham wouldn't have attempted. But then it becomes natural as walking, your chin fits perfectly into the cup…I still sometimes hold pencils with a bow grip.
I was so proud of my scratched, used viola. I loved scratching up my rosen block and carefully adjusting the tension on the bow hair. I couldn't wait for the day when I would learn to tune my instrument myself. I keep hoping that someday I will find space in my life to take it back up again.