I used to take violin lessons. One of my teachers gave lessons at her house, in her living room, which was blandly pristine in that way that seldom-used spaces are. To protect the cream-colored carpet, she spread a trail of throw rugs down the center of the room.
She placed two round rugs in front of the big arched window, where sunlight streamed in on the music stand. I would stand on one rug and she would stand one the other, looking at the music over my shoulder and counting the measures to keep me from losing my place.
I always had to remind her to switch rugs with me so she would stand on my right side of me, my ‘good ear’ side, so I could hear her.
I think the lessons lasted half an hour, maybe forty minutes. When I was ready to stop, I would lower my violin and shake out my right wrist a little and roll my left shoulder forward and backward, never taking my eyes off the music, as if I were bracing myself to push through the fatigue. It was during my very first lesson that I discovered that trick—every time, my teacher would say, empathetically, as if she were exhausted herself, “think you’re about done for the day?”
My convulsive stretches began incrementally earlier and earlier each week. I told my mom I wanted to quit the private lessons before I started walking into the living room with a crick in my neck.
For a while, I went to Ridgefield Music after school once a week. The carpeting in those cramped practice rooms in the back was probably due for an asbestos test. After my lesson, I would stand in front of the sheet music display and memorize lyrics, one verse at a time. “From a Distance.” “The Rose.” Joan Osbourne’s “One of Us.”
I wanted to like the idea of God on a bus, just another slob among the rest of us.
Just like I wanted to like the violin.
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