A female author writes about devotion to a dominant female from male perspective, very seductive, well written
first published 15.05.2018
I remember like it was yesterday opening that case, slowly lifting the lid, running my fingers along the velvet interior, not even daring to touch the smooth hard wood of the violin itself. It was days before I had the courage to actually touch it, weeks before I finally lifted out from the case and held it aloft. I was in awe, more than that, I was scared by it, by what it meant to me, of the memories. It was so much a part of my grandfather, so much a part of my childhood. All those years staring up at him, his eyes screwed shut, his fingers dancing along its neck. They say he was the best of his generation, a true virtuoso. The music flowed from him, flowed directly into my soul, not so much sound as pure emotion. I could feel it reverberate through every cell of my body, it wasn’t something external, it somehow seemed to come from within me. Every note, every pause, every moment took me into an ever more dreamlike state. It was my religious ecstasy, my paradise. I felt so close to him, connected by the pure emotion of his music. When he played, the world simply melted away, it stopped to listen, sat in rapture until he was finished, until he shut that magical violin back in its case and the spell was broken.
I hadn’t seen him for years. We’d fallen out as I grew up, drifted apart. His death had devastated me nonetheless, not the death of who he had been then, but of who he was all those years ago. The idea that I would never, that no one would ever, hear him play again was too much, too painful. That something that beautiful, that untouchably sublime, could just disappear forever. I wept for the music as much, more perhaps, than for the man. I wept for days, lost in despair, raging against the futility of it all, the cruelty of impermanence, the silence. Continue reading “The Violinist 3 (3)“
