Remember me mentioning I’m a bastard? My father, theoretically, is/was a professional musician. I’ve never met the guy, so I can’t say one way or the other, but I do distinctly remember spending a LOT of time singing when I was very young. I was delighted when I discovered that I could start from any pitch and sing the same melody (inasmuch as my tiny, undeveloped vocal chords could produce), and surprised by how enraging it was when I would change the melodic line halfway through to something far more deranged—later on, I discovered the word for this was modulation, but at the time it just sounded horrible. Shortly thereafter, my mother (bless her) asked me if I wanted to play an instrument. We were getting a new family member, you see, a daddy, who was not MY daddy, but who WOULD be my daddy, and did I want a present for the occasion? Mommy would buy me an instrument if I wanted to play.
“Violin!” I squealed.
“Absolutely not.”
I was dismayed in that way that only children are capable of—that feeling that the world could not possibly exist ten seconds from now because there’s no point in living anymore. “Why not?” (I don’t know that I was quite that reasonable in my reply.)
“Because violins don’t sound good.”
By the way, this is something my mother and I still disagree on. Anyway.
“How about piano?” My mother suggested.
And piano it was.
Later on, at the age of 11, my classmates and I had the opportunity to join band and/or choir. I had absolutely no interest in singing—instruments had completely replaced my voice as my preferred expressive medium, but my mother insisted on including choir in my schedule anyway—but I was interested in playing an instrument.
“Can I play violin?” I asked. Hopeful, but this time I was wise enough to know not to put all my eggs in one basket.
“There isn’t an orchestra at your school. There’s band. Why don’t you play flute?”
My mom had played flute for a while in high school, and she still had her introductory student model in the house somewhere, which was why she suggested it, and why I flat-out refused.
“Can’t I go to a school that has orchestra?”
“No. How about trumpet?”
My father had a trumpet. The enamel was peeling off in places. It was heavy. It smelled funny. There was no way I was putting that thing anywhere near my face.
“How about percussion?” I asked hopefully.
“Absolutely not.”
“But I could practice in the garage!”
I still don’t understand why, at this point in the conversation, my dad burst out laughing, and my mother looked furious. I probably never will.
Anyway, I ended up settling on oboe, but only because “your best friend will be playing it, too!”
My friend lasted a week. I played on.
Later on, in high school, I started playing in musicals, and we never had a violinist to cover the string solos.
“Can I learn violin for musical?”
“No. We need an oboe in the pit. Why don’t you just play the violin melody on the oboe?”
And later, when I was in college, it came up again while I was chatting with a fellow student in the oboe studio after masterclass. “I think I wanna pick up another instrument,” I said as we put our instruments away.
“Yeah?” She hoisted her English Horn case onto her back. “Clarinet?”
I stared at her. “No, violin. Why clarinet?”
“Oh.” She seemed unimpressed. “Well, if you learn clarinet, you’re a doubler. You can get a lot more gigs that way. Musicals and stuff. Plus, it’s an easy transition.”
At that point, the violin train derailed as I skipped off into the clarinet-saxophone-flute sunset and started doubling. After that, the train was forgotten as I left Academialand for the Real World, and then left the Real World for my Roaring Twenties, and then left my Roaring Twenties for Prodigal-Sonland and my return to the Real World.
But the glorious thing about the Real World is a Real Salary.
And now I have the money to buy a violin.
And I’m living alone.
AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME.
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