Solo An Etude a Day [Pt. 2]

[Caspian]

There’s a meditative quality to the long tones that Caspian’s never quite been able to ascribe to any other aspect of practice. It takes some doing, powering through more than a few instances of doubt, but he finds, it, somehow, the old rhythm and swing of bowing in four, where on that final beat number four his wrist is already slinging in the opposite direction. The motion has a bounce to it, coupled with a demand for elasticity in not just his wrists but also his fingers, all held at diagonal crook in perpetual lithe motion. The issue is one of balance - balance between the grip of his thumb in the padded notch of his bow, and the four other fingers that drape themselves on top. If he clenches his bowing hand too tightly, the sound chokes itself, the back and forth of his down- and up-bows finding themselves cuffed and restricted from the excessive immobility of his joints. Another issue exists from the opposite approach, though, because if he slackens his hold, the comparatively ungoverned bow skids and pulls awry, a weak whistle escaping from the strings instead of any fullness of pitch.

So it takes some doing, and an active attempt to recollect what he should be doing with his elbow, because after many years of this there are some things he’s stopped considering in the active sense. The luxury of taking habit for given and granted is his undoing now, and he watches the minutes waste themselves as he tries to suss out the difference between incorrectness and simple lack of recent practice.

It finds him, though, one way or another, and one more piece of the puzzle slots into place as his bowing arm moves with pendulum’s sway.

And now –

A scale, then?

It’s not that he would have, say, thrown the whole thing across the room if it hadn’t go well, but the thing to be thankful for is that it does go well, playing the first five notes of an A major scale. The hazard here is that he might have played at least four of them incorrectly, if he’d positioned his left hand either too low or too high on the neck to begin with. Following the feeling, he swivels his left hand so that he’s starting on the next string, D, and when he punctuates down for D major the pitches that come are –

Too flat.

Much too flat.

One pitch is a given – that first one, D, which is also what they call open, when you’re just playing the string itself, and if you’ve tuned properly then the pitch is what it is. But you affect the string from the next note and onward, effecting in this instance E, F#, G, and A, because that’s when you start applying pressure to bite the string’s length and subsequently alter the pitch it emits. After the open string, one only has oneself to blame.

The marked lowness of the E, F#, G, and A immediately turns Caspian’s prospective ripple of validation into pointed disparagement. Were anyone else in the room, he would not do this, at least not outwardly, but he’s alone now, and allows a drawn-out sigh to escape him. Succumbing to this most recent defeat, he lowers the violin from his shoulder and drops to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees, with the instrument and bow held at haphazardly angular lofts.

It’s an old position, crouching down this way, and another well-worn habit he hadn’t previously examined until now. Time and distance from Sunberth have lent his behavior a foreign quality, despite it being his own, and in some corner of his mind he feels as if he’s observing and analyzing a stranger. This stranger’s considerably less dour than the battered little hostage who grew up in Sunberth in a den of thugs, reassuringly less spindly, unfortunately not much taller, but still – though, as berates himself, decidedly a far more embarrassing musician. And this stranger is, at this time, capitulating to presenting himself as quite possibly a little pathetic.

All self-flagellation aside, the frustration he faces in this moment isn’t uncommon. The violin is a notoriously fickle and unforgiving instrument, and not a pastime for the accident-prone. Practicing is enduring a series of trial and error, over-estimations and under’s, the principles the same as when one is tuning. If his left hand had started too low, then, the next thing to do is to aim to start higher, and if that ends up being too high then all he can do is aim for a little lower, and on and on until he narrows it down, and E is where it ought to be, and with a little more faith in the staying power of habit, F#, G, and A will align themselves accordingly.

That’s the thing to hold onto too – though the last bit of a scale had been too low, the individual pitches had all been too low together, flat to the same incremental degree. Uniformity in application is a reassuring thing, despite uniformity in error. And that – that he can work with.

Another audible sigh for good measure, and Caspian’s rising from his curled position on the floor, and raising his violin to his shoulder again, bow at the ready.

It’s not like he was born knowing how to do this. It had taken hours, days, all adding up to years. It’s a desolate thought to picture himself as being left so many steps behind, but if he overcame it once - ?

That’s the fear, though. That maybe, simply, he can’t. That he’s far too old now, that there is some mystical quality to this that he will never be able to grasp again. Then there is the matter of being alone in this for the first time. In Avanthal, he’d had his father to gently guide the way, and in Sunberth there was Gavir, who was significantly more blunt about rectifying his errors. There’s no one now with him in Ravok, only this instrument and his old routines and the clattering of the tavern down below.

--
WC: 1,021

[Caspian]

With a wave of relief, Caspian finds that his sense of time, at least the foundations of it, have stayed with him as closely as his sense of pitch.

(It’s more than foundation, it’s walls, it’s rock, it’s not necessarily palatial or even steepled but it’s embedded in him, the tenets of it irrevocable. It could be worse.)

The deceptive simplicity of it is that it’s just counting to four. Counting the ticks, the bells, the chimes. Subdividing into clockwork, alongside a militia’s steady march.

The notes of each scale follow as they should, when they should, one two three four five six seven eight and then down, back to one. It’s going better than it did when he first set out, a lot better, and after a few more rounds he evens finds a strong semblance of his old percussive ripple of his fingertips laying themselves down in their measured procession.

Could he, maybe, try going faster?

Overzealousness wins again, the kind ascribed to children who are first learning any instrument, a juvenile inclination he had not missed and finds incredibly irksome now. If you can’t play something well at a slower tempo you certainly can’t do so if you’re driving yourself too quickly - though there’s many a young beginner, past Caspian included, who would try vainly to convince themselves otherwise. Of course he tries that vainly now, though, and of course it doesn’t go well, his bow moving a hare’s tic faster than his left hand is on the strings. The result is a scale that skips and lags, his right hand with the bow concluding its last stroke far sooner than his left hand presses down for the final pitch, the sixteenth - a scale being eight up and eight down - but the irksome errors had started happening long before sixteen, it being clear as early as the fourth or fifth note that his two limbs had slipped out of any claim to synchronization.

Can he be blamed, though, for enthusiasm taking hold, and wanting very badly to feel like his old self again?

Only this part of his old self, that is - this aspect of his being not so fraught as the rest of him.

Not that it’s perfect, though? It’s not something he’s tried to actively forget but the memory of it comes upon him suddenly, with some tenseness in its suggestion of newness, that once during a lesson when his right and left hands had slipped out of their conjunctive timing, Gavir had lost his patience and hurled a block of rosin against the wall. The sudden clap and crackle did not, surprise-surprise, immediately imbue a twelve-year-old Caspian with a greater sense of rhythm and mobility. And if currently twenty-five-year-old Caspian thinks about it a little more, memory makes it very clear this sort of thing had happened a lot more than once.

Though he isn’t angry - though maybe he is? - looking backwards to those days brings with it a weightiness that settles across his shoulders, wraps itself around his neck and drags downwards. The violin feels cumbersome, suddenly, arresting of his joints and jaw, and even the bow seems to render itself as made of lead.

It’s been well over an hour since he first began tuning. Much closer to two.

It’s worthy of a break.

[Caspian]

[PLACEHOLDER]