Music was still there
Update: In December 2019, I graduated with a Master’s of Arts in Teaching and am now currently in my 3rd year of teaching fourth grade. I did this because at the time where Carsten and I were living, there were no orchestra positions and I love the classroom, I love teaching (or so I thought I did ~ there are a lot of education burnout blog posts out there, so I will save my thoughts on this for another day ~ now back to music). Click the fast forward button to now, January 2022. Here I am writing a blog post on this little musical space in the world that I’ve truly missed.
Music can be weird. Have you ever had stages of not wanting to listen to any music let alone perform? I’m no top notch violinist by any means so maybe it’s just me. I go through these strange stages of not wanting to listen to any music (sorry Carsten) and definitely not wanting to unpack my violin. There were moments these past few years that I would try practicing (especially if my dear husband would tell me how much he misses hearing it) but when I did, I would feel nothing except wanting nothing to do with it. But.it.was.still.there. I couldn’t escape it. It doesn't help that we’ve made a music room in any place we live: whether that was an extra room, a guest room, or what is now currently supposed to be a dining room.
Listening: There are a lot of beautiful aspects about music but one of the frustratingly beauties of it is that it is always there. Our son Charlie was born in July of 2020, the night of Taylor Swift’s Folklore album drop. For some reason, every time we listened to the album for those first few weeks of his life, I would cry - yes, I’m sure my post-partum hormones has a huge part in this - but I also believe it was because of the moment this musical experience occurred also happened to be during the most life changing moment of my life. After having an extremely intense and scary post delivery experience, Carsten was left alone in a room with Charlie in his arms and with Taylor Swift’s new album. Though I wasn’t there for a brief while, music was still there. It was still there. I can also admit that I no longer shed tears to this album and do enjoy listening to it.
Performing: In the few months or so of the Covid-19 pandemic, Carsten and I recorded a lot of music for the church. Performing found its way to make an appearance in my life again in a completely unexpected and new way. It was a confusing time for my violin and I to figure out how to perform through a phone. At first it was a fun challenge, but then it became increasingly frustrating because I would want to re record over and over until I could get that perfect recording. Eventually, I would give up on attempting perfection (I already knew I would never get the perfect recording) and we would post whatever we had. While this was a challenging season, it reminded me of the importance of performing. Music was in my life at that time in a way I never thought I’d come to know. My job for those months was to create music, to add light into the world at a time when it felt dark. Music was still there.
Of course music flows through our lives in many ways all the time; these are only two memorable ways it has entered my life these past few years. Though I have stages in which I want nothing to do with it, I am always grateful that music is always there.
One of the many recordings we did for our church service:
And of course, here is a Taylor Swift recording session: