One thing about aging is that the loss is increasing all the way around. Loss of agile limbs, progressive hearing loss, cataracts (of course). Loss of friends, family, famous icons we grew up with. It's such a constant, relentless pace. It doesn't eliminate the dancing (yet), but it changes the steps, forcing the dancer to adjust the tapping and mixing.
I am often inclined to stay still, thinking that perhaps in the stillness the loss will slow or even stop.
In that stillness the idea of starting to play the cello at the age of 75 was born. It seemed like it might be a timely distraction, a way to settle into Slow, a way to connect the dots of a lifetime of casual musical engagement: piano, violin, choir. The fame of the melancholic instrument is a complement to the pains, even.
I used to play the violin as a hobby, more like a fiddle and rarely in public. But I broke my left wrist falling down a flight of concrete steps at 70, and the violin became something of a loss. The hand surgeon was fantastic and offered me options: the easy solution, which would leave my hand listless, or the aggressive solution that would require immobility followed by disciplined exercise for a year, but if done correctly, would allow me to regain almost use complete. from my hand
“If you were 90 years old, we would take the easy way out. If you were 40 years old, we would insist the hard way. But you're in the middle, so you have to choose, you have to want that,” he told me. His approach motivated me. I chose the difficult path. I struggled with the loss.
But even with all the repair and recovery work, my left hand was never able to loosen itself to properly rotate around the violin neck, not even long enough to get a jig going. My instrument became something I lent to younger friends, or kept in the living room on a stand, a kind of tombstone, in honor of the anguish I could barely admit.
Then last fall I flew to Nashville to spend a weekend with friends from my early days, gathering to celebrate my 80th birthday. It was joyful, surprising and really difficult all at the same time. A chance to sway to the rhythm of a bluegrass birthday that tunes out in a field and is a stark reminder of the accumulation of losses. So many people missing. Many new walkers and wheelchairs. More than a few of us become cognitively burned out.
Interestingly, several old friends asked him about the violin. I shared the story of the broken hand to explain its absence. Among that crowd it was easy to find sympathy. But one person, without missing a beat, responded: “What about the cello? Without twisting your wrist, your hand simply goes up and down the neck, still four fretless strings, easy!”
I usually overthink decisions, writing pros and cons columns, consulting library books to delve into history and context. But upon returning home, I called the place where I usually took the violin to have it repaired, and the next day, the cello, case, bow, and rosin were at the house. And the day after all that, I found a teacher a few blocks away from me.
For the past six months, I've walked down Vermont Avenue most Sunday afternoons to the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, cello slung like a backpack. Learning is harder and more seductive than I or my “easy” friend had predicted.
I can barely do anything even close to music yet. Still, the cello is magical. Surely all instruments are, each with its own miracle of mathematics, physics and intuition. Finding the right note is more about playing than seeing.
My accomplished teacher, Derek, the son of a cellist and a lifelong cellist himself, says over and over again: “To find the note you're looking for on those fretless strings, learn your bias and correct it. Trust your feelings.”
So, okay, adjust for the losses. You just have to know that adding something to what is left seems to be a fundamental human impulse, difficult to hinder. It's the cello that's in my living room now.
Margaret Ecker is a retired nurse and second soprano with the Ebell Chorale of Los Angeles.
