Things I Could Learn From My Dog

Sometimes wish I were more like my dog, Proton. I don’t envy his bad, ten year old hips, floppy ears, and tendency to drool, all of which may come to me eventually if I live long enough, and I’m certainly glad I don’t have a penchant for smelling and eating brown, fragrant items left on the road by other dogs. But he has an attitude toward life from which I could benefit.

He doesn’t handle steps very well anymore and sometimes trips on the two that lead down to our back yard. This would make me very angry if I were in his place, but he gets up and goes on as if stumbling had been part of his plan all along.

We walk together twice a day. Not as far as we used to, but as far as I think he can handle. He’s getting gray around the muzzle, literally and figuratively, and even though our walks appear to be an effort for him, I think he enjoys them and the vet says it’s important to keep him moving.

He staggers occasionally, but he keeps going with no apparent annoyance or embarrassment. I often have to pull him away from an especially enticing bit of some unidentifiable foul substance, but he takes this in stride as well, not seeming to resent my interference. He’s on to the next attraction with little apparent regret at the missed opportunity.

This is the attitude I need to apply to playing the violin in public (“Playing in public” includes even at my lessons, which involve only my very kind and patient teacher). Mistakes are part of musical life, especially mine, but rather than accepting that they happen and continuing to concentrate on the rest of the piece, I get rattled or annoyed at myself, and that makes it much more likely that I’ll make another. This downhill slide usually ends badly.

If I were more like Proton I could ignore the mistakes of the past, even if they happened only two seconds ago in the last measure. Concentrate on what’s coming up. Go back later and fix whatever problem caused the mistakes, but don’t dwell on them now—there are more screw-up opportunities ahead.

And that’s another thing: I anticipate the hard passages ahead and basically mess them up before I get to them. Apprehension will do that—If I expect to mess up the hard parts then that’s just what I'll do.

I don’t know what Proton’s approach to that one would be, but I’m sure it would be better than mine.

One Alleluia To Go

Performance anxiety (no, not that kind, although maybe that, too—I mean the kind you get when you have to play a musical instrument in public) is a hazard for all musicians, professional and amateur alike. I used to get it in spades when I was a kid. Now I mostly avoid it by only playing in an orchestra, where there’s usually so much other stuff going on that unless I really mess up big time no one notices.

I used to get performance anxiety even when I didn’t have a performance planned. My parents had friends over for dinner occasionally, and if things got a bit dull my dad would say, “Son, go get your violin.” I lived in dread of this every time we had guests because it almost invariably happened when I had not practiced for several days (this was more frequent than it should have been).

I would get so angry with Dad for doing this! Then, in my characteristically introspective and self-deprecating way I would think, “Well, Dummy, if you didn’t let so much time go by without practicing you’d be ready for him.” I had to admit that this was completely true, but did I change my slacker ways? Of course not.

Thinking back on it, he may have been trying to subtly encourage me to practice more regularly. He never prodded or pestered me, but he had his own way of hinting that you never know when you might be called upon to play something.

He was right, too. I remember once in college when my roommate, a music major, happened to notice my copy of a transcription for violin and piano of Vocalise, a composition for voice and piano by Rachmaninoff. I had played it in church once or twice, but not for a long time. In fact, I hadn’t played at all for a long time (I was a physics major; playing the violin was not in my curriculum). My roommate knew the piece but was surprised to see that it had been transcribed for violin. “Let’s go find a piano and try it out,” he said. “Oh, no!” I thought. Tragically, the only piano we could find was in the student lounge, which, shockingly, was full of students.

That didn’t bother him at all, but for me it was instant panic! The long time without practice, the lack of preparation for even the idea of playing, and the other students who certainly weren’t expecting some guy to wander in and start playing a violin, all added up to a case of nerves like I had never had before and have never had since. We played it, but my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t produce a smooth tone to save my soul. Roomie didn’t say anything, but he gave me a puzzled look and I’m sure he thought, “What’s wrong with this guy?” I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Oh—full disclosure—I did really mess up big time in an orchestra once. I was playing viola in a performance of Handel’s Messiah. Just before the end, everyone goes “Alleluia” about four times, then there’s a whole measure of dead silence, and then one final “Alleluia.” Well, this time it wasn't dead silence, because when everyone else came to that measure, I still had one Alleluia to go, and I played it! It probably wasn’t a coincidence that they never asked me to play again.