My Cello And Me

Over the last year, I have finally begun a journey to at last fulfill a long time childhood dream.

I am taking cello lessons.

Yikes!

My expectations have never been grand. I have always and only wanted to be proficient enough so that on some rainy day in September and I had nothing better to do, I could pull up a chair, draw the blinds up in my study and play some melancholy tune, whilst I watch the neighbours go by and listen to the pitter-patter upon my rooftop. That’s all. I have never harboured hopes of playing some day in a grand concert hall somewhere, with thousands of people watching and listening to every stroke of my bow. In fact, that would probably scare me silly!

Instead, I think that gazing out the window as I played, with a cup of coffee on my tabletop, piping hot, waiting for me there would do just fine. I would feel at peace. And accomplished, having come so far in my life and it would be good.

My cello teacher is very nice. He has studied music all his life. He tells me that learning to play the instrument is important, but not the most important. The same is true of playing the right notes, and playing them clearly and cleanly and playing them so that they are neither sharp nor flat. These are all important. But not the most important. Just as each and every note is important, but none of them are important, all at the same time.

What is most important, he tries to tell me again and again, and I try to understand though wisdom perhaps is in the half-understanding, is what is being said with the notes. And the emotions that the notes convey. The drama. The tragedy. The comedy. The love. The horror. The laughter and the tears.

“What are you trying to say with them?” His eyes twinkle.

“What?” I ask, my brows furrowed. “But there are no lyrics. There are no words. How can I say anything? Where is the meaning in that?”

He sits back. He nods. He closes his eyes, the case closed. “Exactly,” he says. “That is exactly right.”

These are the words I continue to chew on today.

And when I sit down to write, when the morning light comes through my window just the right way, when the streams of vapor from my coffee cup swirls upward in just the right manner, then for a moment, just a fleeting moment, I think I might know what he meant. And that’s when I write the best, I think.

That’s when I play without notes.

That’s when I write without words.