violin lessons

Today I found myself in an unlikely situation. I was hiding from the California-esque sun in the cool, dark, faintly sweet-smelling basement workshop of a violin maker and repairman. There were violins of all shapes and sizes hanging from the walls, some with finish, some without, some with strings, some without, some full-sized, some half-sized, some giant (otherwise known, I think, as cellos). The repairman was slightly awkward but friendly, and though I had diagnosed my own problem, he proceeded to tell me all the other things wrong with my eight-month old violin. The strings are too high and cheap and the fingerboard too low, the pegs not "doped" enough. He gave me my choice of three "good" violins with appropriate string-heights and fingerboard angles and set to work, fixing the only fixable problem.


I spent more time staring at the dark graveyard of desks and dressers and couches and painted arches and picture frames that inhabited the basement outside his workshop than I did squeaking out the parts of songs I could remember after two weeks of not playing, convinced it was the violins that were out of tune and not I.

It seemed like such an unassuming place to work: an artists' building with no real need for business or numbers. I paid in crumpled cash. I didn't see the computer in the corner, only the wooden work tables, the mis-matched chairs, the small wood-working tools and the light coming through the distorted glass windows. This is a man who took the less-traveled path. This is a man who does not stare at a computer screen all day. This is a man who gets to surround himself with beauty, in sight and in sound, and he gets a tangible reward from his day's work: a well-working violin, and maybe even a child's smiling face. I certainly walked out of there, into the perfect day, smiling.

One of the reasons I'm a journalist (or I want to be one) is I enjoy finding myself in unlikely situations. Discovering unlikely people. Looking for graffiti under a freeway underpass, watching bikes fly by at a motocross raceway, exploring the bowels of a brand-new clean room in an engineering building, smelling the air in the sanctuary of a LEED-certified environmental synagogue: when I'm in these out-of-the-ordinary situations I like to take a step back, look around, and think, "Not many people can say they have been where I am now." I like to dabble, walk a mile in someone's shoes, and while I don't mind my daily routine, I relish the opportunity to leave it.