Resurrected Violinist
… After sixteen years in hiatus: back in action
Yesterday, I posted a piece about my having achieved fluency in typing over the course of 23 years of daily practice in my erstwhile career (which ended abruptly in 2004 by way of an enforced mass exodus, discourtesy of management).
During this past year, having taken up permanent residence here in Storyland, I type more hours daily than I did on the job. I’m astounded at my eight-fingered fluency (per my prior piece, my pinkies don’t participate).
In my first 16 years of retirement, though I typed sporadically — when my muse popped in for her all-too-brief visits — my performance didn’t seem to suffer from my fallow periods. (Wish I could say the same about my running speed; four weeks in hiatus would kick me halfway back to the starting gate.)
Contemplating the preceding, I wondered whether, had I spent those 16 years in uninterrupted hiatus, I’d have devolved to hunt-and-peck mode (in which case I’d have been publishing far less prolifically).
As I pondered the hypothetical, I was startled by the recollection of an analogous 16-year scenario.
My ex-husband — Dick the Second — had been an award-winning violinist. For no apparent reason — apart from his pervasive fickleness — he ceased performing at the age of 25, determined never to pick up a violin again.
One morning, shortly after he’d turned 41, Dick told me he’d had a vivid dream that he’d been performing in an orchestra. He took it as a sign to resume the violin.
That evening, I heard the strains of Mozart (Bach? Beethoven? I am classically challenged) wafting from the spare room. I assumed Dick had purchased a record album (gen-Xers and millennials: ask Google) to get him back in the groove, so to speak.
When I walked into the room, I was astounded to see Dick playing the violin — flawlessly, to my undiscerning ear.
Alas, within the month, Dick replaced his violin in its casket, wherein it remained for the five-year course of our marriage.
I’d bet five bucks — not that I want to find out, curious though I might be — that Dick’s violin is presently entombed. I’d bet another fiver that it has been sporadically resurrected these past 16 years post-divorce, per his whims.
Regardless, given the astounding aftermath of his first 16-year hiatus, I’d bet his life that Dick hasn’t lost his touch.
