Dead Plants And Violins

I was fortunate enough to experience an exquisite performance last weekend of Symphony Pro Musica.

The featured soloist was a violinist.

He kicked ass.

I have a whole 'nother thought process going on inside my head about the performance and the whole damn experience. You know you will be tortured by my thoughts on this topic soon.

Today I want to talk about the violin, especially in the hands of a musician who is one with the instrument.

In my humble opinion, the violin is the instrument that comes the closest to pure emotion. The instrument can rock, there is no doubt about it. I have listened to musicians wail on that thing like an electric guitar and with the same effect. Adrian Anantawan, the featured soloist, wailed on his violin and I was speechless.

There were quiet moments too. Moments when what he was feeling in his heart was being expressed through him by his instrument.

What got to me last Sunday, the realization that I have known in my heart that finally made the transition to my brain, is that in the powerfully emotional quiet moments, the violin can bring tears to my eyes.

It sounds like tears. When the soloist is holding a note and then slides it one note higher, delicately, it sounds like crying. It is pure emotion. Pure emotion that resonated with my soul, my heart, my frustrations, my disappointments and my love.

A love named Carol. 

My insides quivered when he teased that reality out of his instrument.

I was floored.

Carol brought a plant in out of the cold. Trying to save it. Got it hanging in the living room.

Carol is a giver of life. She created a garden that is magnificent. She created life and color and aroma and sensation and sound. An oasis of peace that is under appreciated by two people scrambling to get by.

Any plant she touches, thrives. It comes naturally and it is magic.

I am not a gardener but the process of planting things, tending to them delicately and with love, watching them flourish, is a process I can respect.

It is the process of life. No different than childbirth.

The plant she brought in does not look good. She thinks maybe she brought it in too late.

The night she pointed it out to me, the night that she made that observation, I looked at the plant, really looked at the plant, and got the same reaction in my gut that I got when Adrian Anantawan slid exquisitely from one note to the next.

The plant is drooping over the sides of the pot it is hanging in and it looks so sad. Plants are delicate and subject to so much violence. It is a miracle they survive at all.

I don't think this plant will survive. But I am not discounting Carol's magic. Maybe she can bring it back.

If not, somehow, the death of this plant, this delicate, naturally beautiful life, is bound up in my mind with the exquisite, emotive musicianship of Adrian Anantawan.