Building Our Own Violins aka Mindfulness

NOTE: This post was originally scheduled to run a few days after the Capital was overrun with domestic terrorists. So I kicked it back to a draft to make room for a few posts about current events. Today is Inauguration Day and I'm sure most of us are holding our breaths waiting to exhale when/if we get through it peacefully. In Trump's inaugural speech four years ago he painted a dark picture of America and promised: "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now." In a perfect world, he'd realize those words should have been spoken today, on his last day in office. In a perfect world he'd know that his legacy will forever be connected to the worst carnage ever set upon our Democracy. But it's not a perfect world and more than ever we could do ourselves a service if we'd spend a little time each day practicing mindfulness.

 
Do you know what impresses me? That a guy could apprentice to a long line of violin makers and still be able to take the craft to such new heights of perfectionism that people nearly three hundred years later are willing to pay millions of dollars to own one of his instruments. Antonio Stradivari, in his seventy years of professional work, made 1,100 stringed instruments and 650 are said to still be in existence. Truly amazing! From a little stab of maple, some pine, glue and varnishes, and with a methodical persistence to find perfection the Stradivarius was born, a line of instruments with full woody tones unsurpassed even today.

I wonder what it would feel like to be truly gifted at something. I wonder if Antonio knew he was a gifted. I doubt it. After all the whole town of Cremona in the northern region of Italy where he lived and worked had a history---three centuries long---of making musical instruments. Did he think of himself as just another guy on an assembly line? Like some guy in Detroit punching out automobiles? Or could he feel that his work was special? Antonio must have had some idea; he kept his vanish recipe a secret even from his wife and children and many people feel that his varnishing process is what gave his violins their magic sound. But then again he was making a living and people protect their livelihood from their competitors, so that doesn’t necessarily mean he knew he was creating masterpieces that would endure over centuries.

I have a book titled, Wherever You Go There You Are---at least I had it before the big book purge last summer. That title amused me whenever I saw the book on the shelf. The author would not be happy to learn that I’ve never actually read the book cover to cover, but I’ve read enough of it to know that it’s about cultivating our ability to live in the present moment. Mindfulness. I don’t know where I am going with this except that I believe a person like Antonio Stradivari must have understood living in the moment. As he worked, he let the woods and varnishes speak to him and he listened in an analytical way that his predecessors, and those who came afterward, hadn’t done. He was not just another guy on an assembly line punching a time clock, picking up a paycheck. He had the “it factor” that Simon on American Idol used to talk about.

I have a sister-in-law who is a wonderful cook. Not only does her food taste fantastic, but her presentation, creativity and thoughtfulness in menu planning are something that I have long admired. She has the “it factor” in the kitchen. She’s in the moment when she is in the kitchen. I have a niece who when her two sons were young, she had the “it factor” when it came to motherhood---and now when it comes to grand-parenthood. Her older sister once said that Melinda is not just a mother, “She’s a human development specialist.” She’s in the moment when she interacts with the children in her life, gives them 100% of her attention.

You can guess what I’m going to say next. Yup, I’m going to tell you that we don’t have to build Stradivarius violins or paint like Rembrandt to achieve a state of oneness with our surroundings. To find that one thing that we can be passionate about, that something that regenerates our spirit and soul, and when we find it we can’t help but give it 100% of our attention. We do so many things on autopilot, thinking of past regrets or worrying about the future, instead of seizing the moment we’re in. Yada, yada, yada. This could be lecture #704 to myself because I fall out of mindfulness as often as I fall into it.

Someone in another blog said words to the affect that we live for the little moments in life that tell us that we’re alive. I couldn’t agree more. I would only add that increasing our happiness can come from practicing mindfulness—of teaching ourselves to live in the small moments of life. Over the past year when the pandemic and politics because the strangest bedfellows ever paired together it’s been impossible for me to live in the moment and I’m hoping I can get back to at least trying to do that. Granted, I’ve never been good at it for more than an afternoon, a day or a week at a time but those times when I do achieve mindfulness have the power to heal. And 2020 left me with a lot of wounds that need healing but it’s time to say, “Yup, today I'm metaphorically building my own violin”---to enjoy the process of whatever I’m doing at the moment. Antonio Stradivari might have said it this way: “If you live in a town that builds musical instruments, build the best damn one you can build.” If you're me you vow to bake more bread, a process that never fails to pull me into the moment. ©

Forging Ahead While Glancing Behind

Back in the days when I worked a lot of overtime hours around the holidays---Easter, Valentine’s Day, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas---I’d get to work at 8 AM and didn’t leave the flower shop until 8 to 10 PM. With a quick lunch out of a sack and dinner brought in by the boss we never left our work stations. It was a wholesale/retail operation so holiday schedules dragged on for several weeks. Decades later when I worked for my husband we’d be out on parking lots plowing snow for long hours. And during a notable, record breaking blizzard we didn’t get out of our trucks for anything but bathroom and gassing up breaks for three days straight. We’d take turns sleeping in two hour shifts while slumped over in our seats. Where on earth did all my energy and stamina go since those days? 

The past two days I’ve had four things penciled in my day planner with three other events on tap for the end of the week and already I’m dog tired and wishing it was Sunday so I can sleep in. Monday it was to the dentist and The Gathering at the senior hall. As I drove the long trip to a dentist in another county south of town, I made a decision that I need to find one closer to home. Heck, I probably go past 100 others as I drive the dreaded S-curve through the city. I’ve known my dentist for forty years, before he even went to dental school. But on the way back home I made another decision to postpone the idea of leaving my tooth guy. Being around people who knew my husband and me before and after Don's stroke makes me feel good.

Though I have to admit at The Gathering (for people looking for friends) I came close to feeling that same way with some new acquaintances. A woman in the group who has an extensive background in dealing with deaf people got us all sharing our life experiences with disabilities. I was able to talk about my husband’s and my experience going to speech classes with future speech pathologists. For six years, two days a week, I sat behind a one way mirror with a college professor and her class as a series of student clinicians worked with my husband on the other side of the glass. Even though his vocabulary never got above twenty-five unprompted words), my husband often had all of us laughing so hard it was hard to stop and he could intone a single word in a dozen ways in an effort to be understood. The professors kept him at the college for so long because, they said, he taught their students to see their clients as more than just textbook language disorders; that real people with unique personalities are underneath the disability they’d be treating out in the field.

Most widows who were caregivers to our spouses have our battle scars and war stories to tell. Some fought the revolving doors of medical clinics and treatment changes. Some witnessed the slow decline of the mind and/or the body. We caregiver veterans recognize kindred spirits and we seem to bond over being “valued and understood” in that context. I was a daughter, a sibling, an artist, a wife, a florist, and a snowplower and people everywhere understand what those labels mean but somehow summarizing the last twelve years of life with Don up with the single word of “caregiver” seems like it lacks clarity to anyone who has not-been-there-done-that. One woman who was at The Gathering talked about how the local widows group helped her with that. I had been invited by mail to join that widow's group in my first year out from Don’s death, but going meant I’d have to go through the dreaded S-Curved after dark so I passed on the opportunity.

Tuesday I was back to the senior hall for the Matter of Balance class and a luncheon where a Korean violinist entertained us with Bach and a few hard rock pieces that he arranged himself. His talks in between sonatas (or whatever they’re called) made me wish I could find a music appreciation class. That guy could make his two hundred year old instrument sing and he had a wonderful sense of humor as he answered our many questions. Someone asked how long he'd been playing and he took out his phone and said, "About ten minutes." Someone else asked if he could play The Devil Went Down to Georgia and he answered that he can play it but he won’t, adding that all violinists hate getting that request. He didn't explain why but he did explain the differences between a fiddle and a violin—the same instrument held in a different way, one featuring finger work, the other featuring bow work. Being a long-time fan of blue-grass music it wasn’t much of a stretch for me to thoroughly appreciate this solo act. Lunch and a great floor show for $6.00. It doesn’t get much better than that and he made it worthwhile to be dog tired this week. ©

I love this two minute video with its upbeat message about love, death and looking at life. If anyone knows who this guy is, please clue me in. I should know but I've been drawing a blank for days.