Allegro Apassionato

“You uh, still playing cello?” Asks my cousin’s husband at every family dinner.

“No, I quit,” I respond. But he’ll ask again in a few weeks, because he wasn’t really listening to the answer. He’s just trying to make cordial conversation with his dour teenage cousin. Somehow, Dad is always within earshot. Sometimes he’ll make a quip like, “Yeah, right after I bought you a four-thousand-dollar cello,” but after a few rounds of this exact interaction, he says nothing, just walks away.

Dad was so excited when we bought that cello together. So excited he forgot to mind the speed limit on the way home. He was so embarrassed when he got pulled over. I was 14, just emerging from my daddy’s girl phase. I think he was afraid of losing me, and the cello was a way to keep me close. Maybe that’s why I decided to quit. I had several reasons for packing up the cello: a stacked school schedule that didn’t allow for orchestra class, an austere private teacher with high expectations, an aversion to being associated with the other dorky orchestra kids, a desire to learn guitar instead. But I think most of all, I needed to rebel in some small way. It’s part of teenage homeostasis, especially for “gifted” children on whom parents put the weight of the world.

At 15, Dad sets up a private audition for me for a youth orchestra. I botch it on purpose. Then the cello goes in its case and for years and becomes nothing more than a decoration. A conversation piece for visitors, and the conversation always comes back to how I let my parents down. Throughout those years, I withstand their snarky comments with quiet rage.

Whenever they saw anyone else playing the cello, “That could have been you. But….”

In my sophomore year of college, my campus hosts a rock band with a female cellist and vocalist. She’s magnetic. That could have been me. But…

That summer, I try to sell my cello on Craigslist for pocket money. No takers.

By 2020, it’s 14 years since the cello saw the light of day. Maybe it’s the trauma of the season and the need for some kind of respite. Maybe it’s the feeling of being “stuck” and needing to feel like I’m moving forward in some way. Maybe it’s sheer boredom. Maybe it’s all that. But in 2020, I finally crack open the case.

I half-expect all the old feelings to come rushing out. All the resentment, the indignation, the teenage angst. I’m ready for it. I lift the beast from its red velvet coffin and pluck its out-of-tune strings. It’s reanimated with new life, with the old one behind us. This is no longer about my relationship with my parents. It’s about my relationship with me.

I Google cello teachers and called the first one I liked. He’s a composer, like me. He's deeply analog—he doesn’t own a cellphone or a computer and was only gifted an iPad to do virtual lessons when the pandemic hit. He tends to use inscrutable statements like, “each note has its own individual demands,” and “you want to pull more air through the bow,” and “don’t worry about shifting. Your ear will tell you where to go.” I do my best to follow because the language we have for music is inadequate—we have to make it up as we go.

“What do you want from this? What are you intending to do with the cello?” My teacher asks.

“I don’t know. Learn it,” I reply.

In our first lesson, he has me wrap my arms around the cello and walk around my apartment with it.

“It’s part of you now.”

I pick it up quickly. Practicing, learning new music, improvising, even just the feeling of moving the bow across the strings and feeling the vibrations is a meditation. Meditation doesn’t always have to be silent. It can be loud. It can be a celebration. It can be a lament. It can be catharsis. It can be passionate and ferocious. It can reverberate off the walls of your tiny apartment. It can piss off your neighbors when they’re trying to have a quiet night in.

It can also be infuriating. I’m too hard on myself. I know that about myself. I think my drive to be “exceptional” as a kid never really dissipated. The “gifted child” who stumbled woefully under-equipped into adulthood rages in frustration. At 30 years old, am I too old to learn anything new? Am I too settled in mediocrity? Can I ever learn to accept setbacks? Can I push through local minimums without hurting myself?

I left my last lesson with tears in my eyes and a burning lump in my throat.

“I think I’m getting worse.”

“It’s my job to tell you if you’re getting worse. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard that.

My cello is standing up the corner right now, watching me work my day job. Later today, I’ll either get it out and practice it, or throw it into the street in front of a moving truck. My sheet music is strewn across the floor, crinkled from turning the pages, marked up furiously with a dull pencil. Later today, I’ll either arrange it on the music stand and play it, or burn it over an open flame.

What do I want from this?

Ask me in a few years, because I honestly don’t know.

But it’s part of me now.