Some of my very early memories are of me being consumed by the sound of the violin. A dear early friend, Amy Delk would spell bind me with her playing at town festivals and church and the like. We're talking the age of kindergarten and before. According to Mom I was rather smitten with Amy, babbling about her incessantly, perhaps it wasn't really Amy that captivated me, but the sound of her violin.

Playing the violin, perhaps the only experience that I truly wanted to partake of that I was not indulged in as a child. Sure there are other things, but even a spoiled child like me knows the limits of what to ask for and what to want, and really the playing of the violin was not really an unreasonable indulgence to be wanted. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that our living room was already graced by a beautiful piano, the physical manifestation of an earlier musical indulgence upon my parents first born, my beloved sister.

Piano lessons were had, but they were NOT a violin, and at the end of six weeks my piano teacher moved, and that was the end of that. My parents saw I did not practice, and thus used this as argument that I did not need the violin, as I would most likely not practice it either. I didn't practice the piano, because the piano does not speak to my soul. My parents don't get that, they didn't get that and in truth have LONG forgotten there baby boy ever loved the instrument so.

Perhaps that was and is my parents shortcoming. That inability to understand what enthralls, enchants, and spell binds the very soul of a person like me. The passions that we feel, the desire for experiences that we beg to consume us, can not be transferred from one object (the violin) to another object (the piano.) One experience speaks a language that not even I am aware I can converse in, my very soul unbeknownst to me having days long diatribes of conversation in the moment of a single breath. No, it just does not work that way. The very essence of that consuming, passionate experience is all bound up within extremely unforgiving demands. To suggest that I play the piano and not the violin, well really that was the same as telling me to breath sweet lung tingling alpine air while submerged in the deapest abyss of the ocean. That transference of passion they so flippantly commanded, that transference was quiet simply an impossibility. One can not command the soul we are only able to follow where it would lead us. If we do this with great exuberance surely great happiness will be found.

Ah but I'm laying blame where blame does not belong, perhaps it was the inability of a mere babe to communicate the awe inspiring breadth of the consumption of his soul by the sound of the violin. Yes, yes the thoughts to complex to express at my tender age being the downfall of my want, my desire. But I remember them, and can more accurately now give them voice.

You would think my musical collection would be full of pieces for the violin. But they are blatantly lacking. The violin, I hear it and nearly weep. I am around one who plays and feel envy of the deepest shade of green. Jealousy, and even twinges of malice thrust out from me to them. I'm bitter, absolutely pucker mouthed over the absence of this stringed voice from my life. And even now at the age of 26 nearly a bit scared of the thought of taking up a bow. Frustrated that at this age it could be a matter as simple as breathing if only I had been indulged, but rather it would now be a struggle. A journey full of stumbling, my early brain never having been hardwired for the experience when I was still young and growing neural pathways at an exponential rate. No, i'm bitter that even if I started now, I will never play with the ease that I might have.

And so once more I press play.