Back to Bach

by Caren Crane

Dearest Banditas and Buddies, I have a confession to make. In my misspent youth, I devoted hours every day to study and practice of a cruel instrument of torture. I evoked scorn in my siblings, forbearance in my parents and derision in my friends. I suffered bodily pain and nauseating uncertainty on a daily basis. Some of you may have suffered a similar sort of obsession in your youth. My dear ones, I was a slave to...the violin.

Please do not mistake my devotion for actual talent. God gave me a boundless love of beautiful music and a very modest gift for it. I am not being modest, as Johann Sebastian Bach was when he referred to "the small talents for music which Heaven had granted him." No, I seriously have only a competence for playing violin. That is about what one can expect from 10 years of public school strings ensemble/orchestra and zero private instruction, so I try to be content.


Another confession: I have taken up playing violin again. This is after a 28-year hiatus. Twenty-eight years. Some of you haven't been alive that long! To recap: 10 years of enthusiastic, but dubious, study and instruction followed by 28 years of almost never touching my violin. This doesn't seem like it would bode well for my abilities these days. Believe me, it doesn't!


But I looked around at my little nest after we moved the second child to college last month. I scanned my calendar. I noted all the free time I have now that my neediest child is away for much of the year. I noted, with an aching heart, that my youngest - my baby! - is now a senior in high school. I wondered how I would fill the time after she, too, goes away to school. The answer seemed both obvious and crazy to me: start playing violin again.

So, I contacted a man at church who encourages members of the congregation every fall to "dust off their instruments" and join the String Ensemble. He was initially excited that I was interested, but was disconcerted with my level of need. I don't think he took me seriously when I said I hadn't played in 28 years. He figured out pretty quick, though, that I was in no way exaggerating my rustiness. (Actual portrait of me playing violin in high school - hand-tinted sepia, which was all the rage in the 20s!)


I picked up my long-neglected violin 12 days ago. Since then, I have spent lots of money on new strings, a new bridge, a new sound post, 2 new shoulder rests, a new chin rest, a new bow and getting my old bow rehaired (not to mention the labor that went into setting up the new bridge and soundpost). I remembered that I like the guys in the fiddle shop much better than the snooty "luthier" who caters to professional musicians. I also learned from the snooty luthier that my violin has a level fingerboard - a near-fatal flaw according to this guy and the source of some back pain. He looked quite disgusted when I told him I couldn't afford another violin, so I was going to have to work around it.


My fatally-flawed violin and I have been practicing - okay, relearning - absolutely everything in the past 12 days. We have also rekindled a deep affection for Bach. I am working on a Bach menuet for an audition with the Really Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle (that's a real thing - Google it!). I may be too terrible for them; time will tell. I do know that my left-hand fingers have never been so sore and that I haven't been this happy in years.


So do you have an interest, hobby or love have you rediscovered from your misspent youth? Or do you have something in mind you would like to take up "one of these days"? Do share! And if you have any suggestions for toughening up tender fingertips, please pass them along. :)

Obsession in the Air

by Nancy

Obsession is not just a perfume to me. It's more like a hobby. A lifelong hobby, in fact, though I haven't been actively obsessed by any one thing all this time. I've engaged more in something like serial obsessions. The dh noticed this not long after we were married and commented, "When you get into something, you really get into it, don't you?"

He said this with remarkable good humor, considering that the obsession of the time was Richard III and that it caused him to visit way more battlefields and castles than he cared anything about (which would be next nothing, the level of his caring about such things, especially battlefields). But he bore it with the best of good will, just as he carted home from London the many books I'd purchased as fuel. Pictured at left is the statue of Richard III in Castle Gardens, Leicester. Just finding it was a bit of an adventure, but that's a blog for another day.

Eventually, however, I'd read everything I could find that seemed to add anything new and not support the traditional wicked uncle image. The Richard III Society offered a number of primary source documents for sale, some of which would've been useful for general medieval research though many were outside my price range. I particularly liked Bertram Fields' Royal Blood, which lays out a compelling case for the king's good reputation--as well it should, considering that Fields is a prominent attorney. At that point, the Richard III obsession dropped back to the more normal level of an ongoing interest. However, I do still keep an eye out for any novels not espousing the traditional view. I have a small collection of them.


I also have a collection of Arthuriana, having gone through a similar period of fanaticism about the Arthurian legends. The movie Camelot came out as I hit an idealistic phase. I loved it--the costumes, the ideas like might for right and the highly unrealistic but still inspiring view of chivalry and knightly honor. Regardless of its level of accuracy or lack thereof, it ignited my imagination. I visited Tintagel as a college student and was disappointed, though not entirely surprised, to find that there was no evidence of its having been any sort of warlord's stronghold. When the dh and I went back with the boy (himself in the midst of an Arthurian binge) some years later, though, we learned lightning had caused a big peat fire on the promontory, burning away several layers of soil and exposing--oh, yes!--ruins consistent with a warlord's stronghold of the Arthurian age.

Just as an aside, I think most of us here would agree that Clive Owen made a pretty rockin' King Arthur. Richard Harris, in his day, was a pretty decent one, too. So was Nigel Terry in John Boorman's lavish Excalibur.

The first of these serial obsessions hit when I was in second grade, though I didn't realize what was happening at the time. When I was seven, I discovered Superman and his astounding universe, including the Legion of Super-Heroes. The four-color world totally captivated me and ignited my imagination. I read everything I could get my hands on, and I'm convinced my engagement with comic books fed directly into my love of science fiction and fantasy. I was active in fandom for almost 20 years and did write a fair bit of fan fiction, some of which the dh claims would be book-length if it were in real manuscript format.

One of the earliest stories I remember was one in which Saturn Girl, the telepath, discovered that one Legionnaire was fated to die protecting Earth from invasion, so she stole the election for Leader, kicked out everyone else, and went out to meet the foe alone. However, Lightning Lad (whose power is what you might think from the name) disobeyed orders, went after her, and died protecting her. The Legion vowed to revive him, eventually succeeding, and Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad became the great love affair of the Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes.

At one time, I could list the code names, real names, planets of origin, powers, and weaknesses of all the Legionnaires AND all their enemies. Really. I happened to think of this when the boy went through his Pokemon phase and could name all the stages of the various dozens of pokemon, the means by which they evolved, their powers at each stage, and which pokemon could effectively battle which others. I know nothing about pokemon, but I could probably still make a fair stab at the trivia for the Legion I loved.

I got older, which I refuse to call growing up, and my interests broadened, but I still love those heroes of my childhood and the ideals they inspired. The comic books have changed, re-doing the characters from Superman on down, including my beloved Legion, and the new versions don't grab me the way the old ones did--maybe because I'm no longer seven years old? I don't totally love the Legion's incarnation on Smallville, but I'm now totally hooked on Smallville itself, as some of you may remember from last summer.

The current obsession, even now winding down to a mild level of interest, is a movie I happened to see on HBO. I'm not going to say which movie it is because, much as I enjoy some parts of it and much as they intrigue me, I think it has serious problems with story and I don't want to diss it. It fits my pattern, though--intense interest that eventually settles into something more casual. I did like this movie enough to buy it.

So what about you? Do you have obsessions with particular subjects--time periods, musicians, books, movies? Do you have longstanding obsessions or are you, too, given to serial obsession? Or do you content yourself with more normal levels of interest?