Posts Tagged: Kreisler Praeludium and Allegro

When I was five years old, my dad lost his job. I can’t remember why exactly. He may have been laid off, or he may have been fired. I think it was politics, or at least that would be in alignment with the history of future jobs he lost. I remember that first move, with the moving truck and belongings stuffed into cardboard boxes and wrapped in newspaper, with all that strange and anxious feeling of loss that came with it all. I remember driving across the country very vaguely, or at least waking up from sleeping in the back seat as we entered a hotel somewhere in between.

Evansville was the roosting nest of my mother’s side of the family. My father had essentially scored a Human Resources job through my mother’s father, who was VP of a local Indiana bank and had a lot of decent business connections. The job consisted of working for another manufacturing plant. I can’t remember what they manufactured, but it’s really not important.

I’ve been lucky enough to have gotten to meet and know all four of my grandparents, but my maternal grandpa Jack (the one who got my dad the job in Evansville) died when I was seven. Incredibly, at the time of writing this, the other three are still alive in their eighties. I wish I had gotten to know my grandpa Jack better than I did. Maybe I wouldn’t turn him into such a hero in my mind if I had known him better. Also, he essentially died of alcoholism (actually it was a rare cancer of the nose, but alcoholism was what really apparently did him in for the most part), his alcoholism being something that perhaps made him somewhat less of a hero in my mom’s eyes and my mom’s two brothers’ eyes (those of my uncles Walt and Bill).

I still think though, that my grandfather Jack was one of the greatest men I ever knew. He taught me the most valuable single thing I know about life, the world, and the people in it. He always loved hearing me play violin, and he used to brag about my talent as my playing developed so quickly between the ages of 5 and 7, exclaiming from his brown leather armchair in my grandparents’ living room, “I hope I live to see the day you play in Carnegie Hall!” I can never forget the pride and happiness in my grandfather’s face as he said that to me.

And so he proceeded to then, one day, teach me the most valuable thing I know. One day, when myself and my sister and mom and dad were all together visiting my maternal grandparents, grandpa Jack told me to come take a walk with him around the lake behind the condo. The lake was fairly small, but it made for a nice short, slow stroll, for instance after a meal. Grandpa Jack and his two sons, my uncles Bill and Walt, often liked to fish in the lake, and they had a sort of environmental concern for the health of the fish population in the lake, generally taking care to throw the fish back in the pond after catching them to keep the fish population thriving.

And grandpa liked to take me fishing next to the lake as well. Once, my cousin Clay had fallen into the lake when he was around four years old, and the lake was very muddy so my grandma Doris had to work a real number to get the boy clean. The lake had a real sense of magic and memories and family tradition imprinted in it, so that’s why grandpa Jack had asked me to come with him on a walk around the lake, to teach me the most important thing I know.

On this profound walk, he told me that he had made a decent amount of money in his life, and he was glad of that because money is able to keep a person comfortable for the most part, and is able to allow you to care for your loved ones responsibly and so forth. And he said in a very solemn tone that he might not be around for much longer, and so there’s something he wanted to tell me about his life that was deeply important, something he wanted me to know and carry with me always.

He said that whenever his friends were in trouble, or even if strangers were in trouble or in some serious kind of need–say if a friend had lost the roof over his head, or couldn’t put meals on his family’s plates, or whatever really–that whenever that happened and he was within his means to do something about it, that by God that’s what he would do. And he said that nothing else in life really matters; that when your help is needed by those less fortunate than yourself, and you’re in a position to give or help in some way, then that’s what you do!

I suppose one could say it was a simple lesson on the virtue of Christian charity, but the way it was told, the teary-eyed meaning in the old man’s time-worn face when he recounted the depth of bare-naked essential meaning that Compassion had had in his life, how it had meant so much more than any material acquisition he had experienced, or anything really–that it was the only important thing–something he wanted his grandson to know and live with and embrace the rest of his life more than anything, something he knew lived longer than he did, something he could feel shaking his soul beyond all time and space but which he knew he had to impart with a deep, careful reverence, so that I might grasp the transmission beyond any trace of the transmitter. It went so far beyond the man’s religion, really, and yet was the basis of all his religion. It’s amazing what that child was able to take in, and that child is still trying to remain as humble as his grandfather was that day.

I think Grandpa had told me this because he thought he knew what compassion I might be able to give the world and those around me with what he saw as God’s great gift to me of this incredible musical talent of violin playing; perfectly God-tooled for this divine purpose of giving and helping those in need. This is why Grandpa Jack wanted to see me play in Carnegie Hall.

By the time I was 7, shortly before my grandfather died, I had been led through nearly all of the 10 Suzuki method violin books by my mother, who was a great violin teacher. This was about the same time that I started writing love letters to the first girl I fell in love with in elementary school. I wrote her a lot of love letters too, and she liked my letters and liked being my “girlfriend.” I almost kissed her once on the playground, but couldn’t summon the courage. But I did excel in Suzuki.

Suzuki method was a method created by Sinichi Suzuki, and looking back on the fact that I am a product of Suzuki makes me realize that this was likely my first introduction to Japanese Zen Buddhism and mindfulness practice. Sinichi Suzuki was a Japanese man who made a great impact on the lives of Japanese children whose lives had been torn apart by World War II. He taught the central power of love and compassion in teaching music, and this was the aspect my mother treasured about his method more highly than any other aspect.

By the time I was 7 I had made it through all ten Suzuki books. I had begun to play when I was 5, two years earlier. Normally, this process would take many, many years to unfold for a beginner. But apparently, even in the first few hours of my playing the violin, it was apparent to my mother that I had a special gift for music. And, I do clearly remember that I loved it like nothing else. It was a somewhat strange memory of folks coming into see me practicing on occasion and actually being seemingly frightened by how fast I was advancing, as though it were unnatural, which strangely permeated the whole affair.

Looking back on it I realize that the conversations between my parents, revolving around the issue of my development as their child, must have been something along the lines of “oh God, what are we going to do?” “Well, we can’t make him quit” “Maybe he’ll get bullied at school for being so uncannily talented and want to quit” “well, let’s just make sure his math and science skills progress just as fast” “You realize Jane, this is going to set him apart from the whole world forever” “Well what do you want me to do about it Jim? HE’S the one who wanted to play it!”

And I do even remember that actually, I had been asking for a violin since I was old enough to speak. I couldn’t pronounce violin; all I could say was “va-van, va-van, mommy va-van” (some of my first spoken words aside for my attempts at securing access to my much-favored “creamed spinach”). My mother Jane was of the belief that it wasn’t wise to let a child have an instrument just too early, so she waited until I was five to give me one. Meanwhile, I was given a cereal box with a ruler and rubber bands to make a play-violin. And until then, I actually got the dose of musical expansion I desired through my dad, who played me many of his much-loved classical music LP’s, including Stravinsky’s Firebird, which he told a masterful made-up bedtime story to which I would demand he tell me over and over again to the Firebird.

When I was five years old, I was finally given a tiny violin. I loved it so much that apparently I would often practice three hours a day, often straight through, and I had to be encouraged to stop and go out and play with the other children. I have to admit, my mother found ways to match me in my precociousness.

For instance, I was developing a habit with my left hand which she referred to as “slumpy hand” which simply meant my hand was coming too far up into the fingerboard, whereas a good left wrist of a violinist needs to remain straight for better maneuvering of the fingers. One morning I awoke and went to open my violin case and there was a small, sharp tack taped onto the bottom of the fingerboard. My mother said I could not take the tack off and that now I would simply have to play without the ‘slumpy hand’ if I wanted to play at all. Furthermore, she explained that, sort of like Santa Claus, Sinichi Suzuki had come himself in the middle of the night to attach the tack to make sure I would behave better by not playing with the “slumpy hand.” Who knows, my mother may have saved my whole life as a violinist, HAH! That and she had perhaps shown me a first sort of Jungian glimpse into the sadomasochism present in Japanese Zen discipline.

Admittedly, my mother also sometimes bribed me to practice and advance even faster than I already was. Sometimes, this bribery was done with pocket change, which I would accumulate in a piggy bank and then spend all of at Toys R’ Us. And, my mother would hold competitions amongst all her students (including me) to see who could go the longest recorded number of days in a row practicing at least half an hour. 100 days in a row spent practicing would get a certificate, and then 200 days would get a trophy and 500 days would get a bigger trophy. I accumulated many trophies while everyone else in the studio eventually missed a day. And last but not least, I was promised that if I mastered both J.S. Bach Double Concerto at the end of Suzuki Book number five by Christmas, that Santa would bring me an 8-bit Nintendo. Santa brought the Nintendo and I got glued to Super Mario Brothers. Dad made sure I joined the T-ball team at school, so that I could get a T-ball trophy or two in addition to all the violin trophies.

When I was seven and a half I had played two Mozart violin concertos, Viotti Chaconne, and Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro, and I was getting to be a little too much for my mother, so my mother got me setup in the local University of Evansville preparatory department when I was seven and a half years old, with her friend Cathy Dowager, a professor of violin. Cathy was my first non-mother teacher, and a gorgeous lesbian at that–certainly not my last gorgeous lesbian teacher in life either I might add.

She taught me many valuable lessons, especially concerning the wrist and finger motions that needed to be present in my bow hand. Within a year however, my mother and Cathy decided that I needed yet another teacher, one who could guide me even further.