This Is How It Works

I am tired of wringing words.

Mid-morning I caught a glimpse of the sun, and then my own pale complexion, so I decided to bring my book outside to partake in the glory of the day. Barefoot on the deck, my skin drank in the warmth and the glow, and I'd brought out some pomegranate juice in a glass bottle, naturally. I think my entire body took a gulping sigh of contentment. Which lasted all of twenty minutes.

In that time, I managed to fling a spider to his spiraling, violent death, so at least I had an accomplishment under my belt when I decided to beat a retreat back inside. Yes, the air was already shimmery hot, and everything looked blue because the sun was so bright - when you close your eyes to it and reopen them, everything takes on a blue tinge, try it - and I was already growing uncomfortable. But more than that was a growing mental disquietude.

I told myself I was taking a break, three minutes tops. I ran upstairs, carefully conscious of how my muscles worked as I bounded up; I cannot escape from my obsessions for very long. Into my room to glance at my computer, and still no response.

I am tired of wringing words.

All thoughts of mid-morning sunshine fled, and I sought for something else to do. My number one rule when facing something of this nature is No Dwelling. If my time is not important to someone else, then I refuse to waste a single moment more thinking about it. I cast about for a What Next. Filtering through my abundant projects, I found nothing that suited me, casting idea after idea aside like thumbing through the garments at Goodwill. There had to be something in there, though, and then came to mind La Follia.

I used to be a musician. I used to spend hours every day at my craft, poring over pages of notes, aching with the thrum of four strings. I wanted to be a concert violinist until I was seventeen, and I realized that I hated performing, so I left that world. At eighteen I played my last concert, and that was when I stopped. But I never stopped wanting to be a musician, wanting to feel the confidence of the notes beneath my fingers.

The miracle of the internet is, that if you look hard enough, you can get what you want, and most times immediately. I wanted to play Corelli's La Follia again, but somewhere in my many moves, I'd lost the music.

YouTube had a performance of it, and I listened, but that wasn't enough. So I googled. And googled some more. And switched up my google searches and honed them and finally found a place to download pdf files of sheet music, and as I printed the pages out, I brought out my stand and tightened my bow and tuned my strings to the a442 that I prefer.

And then I practiced. 45 minutes poring over just two pages of the piece, going over note by note, working until my fingers had the pitches just perfect. That is the joy of the violin, there are a million degrees of a pitch you can sound with just the tiniest variation in finger placement. You strive and strive for just the correct clarity of tone, and often the same not won't be played in the exact same manner a second time, due to chord progression.

And then I was filled, caught, free, held. This is why I make the rule No Dwelling, because nothing in life is worth wasting the time that could be spent on a thousand different pursuits. Go out there and chase the things you love to do. And if you want, come find me and we'll make some music together.