New Doors
When I listened to last week’s episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, I felt closely connected to its subject; the story of cognitive scientist, Maya Shankar. Maya trained as a violinist, attending Juilliard and the Pearlman Music Program (working with Itzhak himself). She devoted herself to the violin and was on track for a promising solo career. Until the unthinkable happened: a hand injury (caused by Paganini… ) forced her to stop playing for life. To cut a long story short - and I do recommend listening to the full story in the podcast as it is quite fascinating! - Maya ended up getting a Ph.D. from Oxford and joining Obama’s advisory team in the White House! What resonated with me, though, was the real message of Maya’s story and what I think the podcast was trying to get at: NOT that we can all be amazingly successful at whatever we try and that life will just perfectly fall into place for everybody, but that there doesn’t have to be just ONE thing that we can do with our lives, just one straight road ahead. Sometimes we experience loss, as many of us have in the past year, and doors close on us or things don’t work out as we imagined they would. But when an old door closes, new doors can open which we maybe didn’t even know about before.
Coming from a classical music background - growing up in a family of musicians, studying the violin for my whole life, attending specialist music schools and colleges, etc. - I was always led to believe that I had to devote my life to this one thing if it was what I really wanted to do. I don’t know exactly if I received that message indirectly, by following the careers and footsteps of my idols and stars, or if I had teachers who guided me into carving that life out, a life where violin was the only path forward at the cost of any other interests. I certainly do remember the point at which I made the decision to commit and give up everything else, that to be a violinist and nothing else was what mattered to me and that I would dedicate myself to achieving that one (rather ambiguous) goal.
I’m absolutely sure that there are other fields too where this kind of culture around serious training with a single-minded focus must be the same: dance, academia, sports... I’m also sure that there are elements of this kind of approach that are extremely important; I can’t speak for any other profession, but I know that to master an instrument like the violin and to really understand all of the complexities of classical music - the harmony, form, structure, history, cultural significance etc. etc. - really, one lifetime is not even enough! Starting early and a LOT of practice is simply essential.
However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realised more and more that this one thing is NOT everything. Just like we may all have many favourite foods and pieces of music, so too can we have multiple different interests. I am in no way special in that I enjoy all sorts of things; I love reading, writing, dressing up, organising my money, hiking. I adore a good cèilidh. I enjoy films and engaging conversations and thinking about things. I have lots of interesting friends who are not musicians and I married a scientist! For so long, my world was tiny, revolving solely around my violin. And because it was such a narrow-minded way of living, I was so full of anxiety about my success or failure. But I think that the moment when I allowed myself to imagine a life that was not just about violin but where every day would be so rich with different activities and passions, I became so much happier and, actually, a better violinist too.
It’s not an easy thing, to look at this crucial decision that you made when you were still a child, when you chose to follow one specific life-course, and say, ‘actually, violin alone does not fulfill me and hasn’t really worked out how I thought it would’. It’s also not easy to be an amateur at something, to start from the beginning in learning something new, and be ready to invest time, energy, and, often, money into it. To be honest, this is something I have really struggled with and that has stopped me from trying many new things in the past - I’ve just gotten used to being good at something for a long time that it is intimidating to be a real beginner!
Like many other musicians and performers, I have spent long hours throughout the pandemic researching other potential jobs that I could do to earn money while concerts are still on hold. It seems ridiculous that I am so trained and educated in this ONE area, and so un-qualified for anything else! But something that Maya Shankar talked about on Hidden Brain and that really stayed with me was how much her skills and experiences as a violinist helped her down the road in infinitesimal ways. The undivided attention, determination, and hard work that I have put into the violin have to come in useful for other jobs too… right?
I’m not saying at all that I don’t love the violin anymore, or that I don’t want to be a violinist. Believe me, I’m counting down the days until my first live concert in almost a year and a half (June 26th!). I think that through exploring my other interests - such as writing this newsletter - especially throughout this pandemic experience, I feel strongly that I now know what kind of violinist I want to be, what is truly important to me, and what kind of music-making I want to share with others going forward. And I don’t only want to be a violinist, I want to do and know about lots of things! But the most valuable piece of all of this is knowing that I can. And you can too.
Last Saturday, I saw this glorious painting by Marion Gilmore at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Interestingly, Gilmore studied and then performed throughout her life as a cellist, and was also a wonderful muralist and painter.
Band Concert, by Marion Gilmore (1939)
We are now officially in the summer season. and we are vaccinated, so let’s go for walks in the park with our friends and lovers, listen to live music, and people-watch until the sun goes down and we drag ourselves home again.
Some Interesting Things
I am a huge fan of Alice Munro - she really is the master of the short story. I just finished this collection, ‘Open Secrets’, and although individually they weren’t my favourite stories of hers, as a whole collection I think it is a piece of complete genius.
Speaking of wonderful female writers, this article from The Guardian was quite revealing about the state of sexism in the literary world.
At some point during 2020, I got obsessed with restoration videos on YouTube, and found this channel. I fell quite in love with this Canadian couple, their dog and their farmhouse restoration project. So worth watching from the very beginning.
I have to admit that articles like this one from Vox slightly annoy me… We all know by now that there are and will always be untalented and mediocre people at ‘the top’ - in every single profession. But it is narrow-minded to put this down to Tik Tok and ignore all of the incredible comedians, ballet dancers, variety performs etc. that finally have a platform for their craft and these are the people we should be celebrating on Tik Tok (and everywhere else). Yes, it may take a little extra effort to find them - just the same effort as you might afford to finding the best restaurants or podcasts - but the first step will be to stop writing about the most famous and least brilliant.
The other night I ordered from Bombay Street Food and it was the most delicious and most spicy food I’ve eaten since being in India. Tip: I ordered ‘Indian Hot’.
Is it weird that I kind of loved the idea of this article from The Cut, about how it can actually be good to have people in your life to hate?!
A marvellous quote from Frank Bidart, taken from his interview with the Paris Review;
”Your art should change and develop, get bigger and involve figuring out how one can break the rules. That seems natural, not strange at all - what’s strange is to feel that the art you want to make is in a mode other people have already worked. And exhausted.”I was tickled to discover that Christopher Hitchens, of whom I am/was an admirer (on the whole), lived just down the street from my new apartment!
As I am going through a phase of trying to meet lots of new people and make friends, I think I may do as this article from the New Yorker suggests, and open a conversation with a stranger with the question, “So, what time do you eat dinner?”
I thought I would leave you with this: my cat’s new window hammock. May you all find a comfy spot that makes you half as happy as this one makes him!
