I have played my violin for seven years, yet my fingers still trip over each other whenever I try to play the fast notes.
My bow squeaks in the wrong direction, and, half of the time, I have to simply stop because I have no idea what is happening in the music. The accents and gripping staccato sound lovely—when I sit there and listen with my violin clutched tightly in my lap, unmoving.
The notes accelerate, and I am left behind in a flurry of fuming tempos and rapid sweeps of the bow.
I don’t even know why I still try.
I do, actually.
The simplicity and refinement of my violin are alluring even after seven years of futile efforts to learn how to play it with fluid grace. My violin feels cultured like I get to be a part of a million notes and foreign composers who sat down and inked the rhythms and melodies into existence. It feels like a decaying novel on an old bookshelf, the classic kind with yellowed pages and the musty, illuminating scent of original tales and elegant prose.
I get to be a part of elegant beauty, something dainty and powerful, honed over centuries by musicians and composers and printed in a plethora of different fonts for all of the combinations of music that have been etched into existence over the centuries.
My violin is beautiful. It might sound rather squeaky and stringent when put into motion, but I have fallen into a sophisticated love with stories with no words and songs with bottomless meanings.
People in my life are beautiful like violins. They hum with a sort of venerable grace, the kind untainted by the constant rushing, rushing, rushing, or blasts of consumerism that taint every corner of the world. They’re simple, elegant, discussing and listening instead of talking, talking, talking. They move like music: fluid, jumping from one moment to the next in an artistic movement of lithe notes and lines.
I find immense value in my violin, from the polished exterior to every sweep of the curves to the sticky rosin dust that powders the fingerboard, and the small crack that runs just below the holes. A reminder that even the most beautiful, respectable things have flaws. Everywhere.
Violins are pretty like pearls and porcelain, but there are other beautiful things that remind me precisely of people in my life.
Sunshine. My friend’s hair lights up golden regardless of the weather or amount of light—it’s gorgeous and curly, and her dark eyes reflect the sunshine that thrives in her soul. People love the sun: they flock to beaches and angle their heads up to the clouds in the height of winter in hopes of catching a flash of sunlight across their cheeks. She’s eternal sunlight, something beautiful and bubbly regardless of the hail and sleet that tumbles down.
Oceans. Water in general. In the past, I have been fortunate enough to see such beautiful water in person, the kind that is jade and sparkling, creating endless fractals of rippling blue that match or clash perfectly with the azure tone of the sky. It holds an insurmountable amount of life: fish, crabs, fishermen on their way to the heart of the sea to catch a load of tuna or snapper—it’s endless. My friend reflects the water, spending her days fishing on river banks or gliding across crusted snow in its frozen form on her snowboard.
Laughter. It doesn’t exist constantly in a physical sense like sunlight or oceans, but my friend who embodies laughter and happiness also embodies sassiness and anger. It all stems from a place of love and loyalty. Laughter isn’t always constant, existing in an ebb-and-flow manner, just the way she turns from content to tired to jubilant to ticked off in only a few seconds. She is loveable for all of it, and I think her ability to make me laugh harder than anyone else can is more beautiful than most tangible, constant things.
Flowers. People sketch them into their notes, paint waterlilies in babbling creeks, and rush to colorful fields to snap photos or simply stop and smell the roses. My friend is the embodiment of flowers, living in a girly glow that is compassionate and colorful. Pink, purple, effervescent—the type of traits people immediately resonate with simply because of their charm and beauty.
A lot of people have placed too much emphasis on cookie-cutter beauty, looking just like the person that everyone idolizes without thinking about their own beauty. The sunshine, oceans, aching laughter, gorgeous fields of poppies—it gets overlooked in life, yet I think these things hold the true beauty in the world. Different fonts, but beautiful nonetheless.
And my violin. Sweet melodies—even if I can’t play any of them. Fewer and fewer people have been attending the orchestra concerts at the school, and a lot of those who actually show up trade the experience in front of them for a long scroll on their phones or a nap.
It might be in the eye of the beholder, and I am so lucky that it is because I get to see the world the way I want to:
Beautiful.
