I wore a plum velvet dress over black tights and Mary Janes. My mom brushed my hair into a ballerina bun and I twirled in my orchestra-ready ensemble. I was off to one of my first Girl Scout events, a music exploration fair.
I roamed the instrument-filled halls. The sound of drums, clarinets, bassoons, and flutes were intriguing, but did not quite pique my interest. Passing through the open halls of the high school venue, past professional and intermediate musicians, I awaited a showstopper.
I could hear the chordophones as their bows crossed their strings, orchestrating simple songs. The song, I don’t remember, but the image I do.
My troop leader captured the moment, the moment that I found my instrument. Previously, I claimed my hotel after the first hotel I stayed at when my childhood house was being worked on. I claimed my airline after my first plane ride as I was so delighted by their complementary Biscoff cookies.
Now, this gracefully high-pitched instrument was to also be mine.
I want to talk about a concept that will be a recurring theme. There’s a word in Latin: desiderium. It means the ardent longing or yearning for something once had or lost.
I first became acquainted with the word in 2021 and it’s popped up so much over the last few years. So, in this episode, I chose to chronicle what led me to the discovery of the word – my experience with the violin.
The woman is out of the frame of the photo, extending her arms. In the photo, I’m across from her with one arm placed behind my back as I extend my other one. In my Girl Scout Daisy eyes, the sophisticatedly carved violin was the most fascinating instrument of them all.
My instrument did not become my own until a few years later. The permission slips were handed out just before we were dismissed for the afternoon.
I explained to my parents my desire to play the violin and after I promised that I would not quit, I like to think they were even more in line with the idea.
In no more than a few weeks, the instrument belonged to me for the next three years. We decorated the rough, scratched case with a coat of spray paint because the old paint was peeling around the edges. I remember the loud stretching sound of the polka-dot duct tape, as we fixed up the perimeter of the borrowed case.
Excitement pierced through my veins when I debuted the newly polished case to my peers and attended my first lesson. The case held my school-issued violin, the one that not even before I could play my first piece, I resented.
E, A, D and G are the four strings on the violin. “I hate the violin,” were the four words I spoke to my parents as my interest in being a violinist flatlined.
My book of songs was entitled “Suzuki Violin School, Vol 1” and featured the songs almost every new musician learns. Hot Cross Buns, Lightly Row, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Go Tell Aunt Rhody.
Increasingly, the book stayed in my backpack sandwiched between folders as I preferred to do homework instead. The violin, in its case, began to make its home on the bench in the dining room, rarely touched.
One afternoon I encountered a schedule. The music stand I got for Christmas stood in the dining room and it was where I was to practice nightly before bed.
Practicing at home was a temporary solution to my resentment, seeing as though the fourth and fifth grade were right around the corner.
The frustration of not being able to read notes grew until I asked to quit.
Just before sixth grade, I returned the bright polka-dotted taped case and the violin to the school’s back room. I piled my chin rest, my song book and my stand into a box in the basement.
I rejoiced with a free chin and open arms.
And, well, that feeling was short-lived.
I tried to erase the violin from my life and forget about the fact that I quit. But I couldn’t.
At one point, I felt as though I let the orchestra instructor down. It was the awkward situation of walking by his classroom for the next few years, my head down, eyes glued to my Converse All-Stars.
For him to ask me how my classes were going and whether I was interested in the violin again, there was only room for the shaking of my head to ensue.
There was the guilt of quitting after being praised for taking up an instrument. They knew I had trouble reading notes, but I feel like it was the fact that I had been willing to try that they loved so much.
It was the fact that I had once stood tall with my violin under my chin, like the ceramic bear that had yet to be gifted to me. The figurine had been saved for me, yet I quit before it became mine.
It did not help to hear the familiar squeaks, the rosin coated bows against the strings during school orchestra assemblies. It did not help to befriend violinists and hear about their intentions of being first chair. The peak of my active avoidance was passing up the opportunity to be in my high school orchestra.
The reminder was in the violinists on TV, every time I went to the orchestra, when I tuned the radio and ended up on the classical station — I could have been in their shoes.
Summer 2020 was chaos, but it also opened up avenues to things I hadn’t had the opportunity to explore. New perspectives emerged and I held onto them for a shard of comfort as the wounds of America exposed themselves.
The fire that music once held in my heart reignited.
While I did regret quitting the violin, my regret did not ruin the love I had for the notes that regularly travel through my earbuds.
I still treasured the notes and vocal art that got stuck in my head, looping on repeat.
During that summer, I scrolled through Snarky Puppy’s catalog on YouTube from sunrise to sundown. Snarky Puppy’s Thing of Gold was my thing of gold, the reason for my golden smiles during the tough summer sun.
On that song was the late Shaun Martin playing the moog, a quite fascinating synthesizer, that brought me some smiles as the world around me seemed to be in peril.
As music had shown itself to be a comfort, Jacob Collier, Sounds of Blackness, and other artists meshed together in a mix of 90s Gospel and Jazz to influence my summer.
As I spent weeks working with GarageBand, configuring sounds that spoke to me, the desire to learn the world of music re-emerged. I was becoming passionate about something that I had little experience with and very minimal formal understanding of.
It was in discovering a community of jazz fanatics that I wanted to understand what exactly they were talking about. Every scroll I made and in the comments I read, there were mentions of “the lick,” the circle of fifths and microtonality. To some, jazz sounds like noise, to others it’s allegedly too elitist, but to me, it just makes sense.
Like the polka-dotted and black violin case that bore my elementary sized instrument, inside is where the heart of my interest lies. Just like the duct tape to the worn and peeling edges, it was music that patched up my regret and neglect for my interest.
One day, I’ll let the rosin dust my fingertips again. Maybe I’ll even sit among the strings. I’ll be able to put into words why the chord progression at 4 minutes and 7 seconds makes me smile every time.
One day, I’ll hold down E, A, D, and G and seamlessly play a piece. I’ll feel deserving of every inch of that little bear figurine as it now just sits and stares at me from across my room.
One day, I’ll finally pick up a violin again and finish telling Aunt Rhody the old gray goose is dead.
