Four or so decades back, during the years of bumbling my way through elementary school, they made us take a test of some sort that purported to measure each student's musical I.Q. As a result of which, my parents shoved a violin into my pudgy little hands and began subjecting me to weekly lessons.
I loved music. I found myself addicted to pop radio at the age of four. My brothers played rock 'n' roll of all kinds on their cheesy record players (later, stereos of increasing quality) and, I think most importantly, my brother Terry, during visits back from college, used to spend evenings sitting in my bedroom doing artwork, playing Dylan albums as I closed my eyes and drifted off -- that voice, those lyrics seeping into my consciousness, affecting my dreams (both sleeping and waking).
My mother played less dangerous folk artists and shmaltzy versions of Irish music on the family stereo, my father played classical music. Somewhere in there I got exposed to a fair amount of jazz -- don't ask me how that found its way into our white-bread milieu. The house, when I think back on it now, was alive with an interesting blend of sounds. All of which produced in me a near-obsessive affinity for the artform that resulted, with time, in a sprawling music collection, something that became a genuine pain in the ass to cart around whenever I changed living spaces.
Despite all that, I never wanted to play violin. It was thrust upon me, as were lessons and the various youth orchestras I found myself in. I had to be forced to do the daily practice thing, scraping away for the bare minimum period of time I could get away with -- 20 to 30 minutes, never more than that. In spite of myself, I think I was not bad -- in spite of my refusal to do the kind of work that would have resulted in a real violinist. I almost always wound up as the third or fourth first violin in the school orchestra, did well in the yearly state competition, always seemed to qualify as a first violin in the annual county or state orchestras. (None of which is to say I was actually any good, just that I was apparently better than many other kids who'd had violins shoved into their little hands.) But I never warmed to the instrument, never wanted to give more than the absolute minimum, always found myself focusing elsewhere during the daily half-hour of forced practice -- out the window, off in my thoughts to other places, wandering around the room to whatever caught my attention to futz and kill time before resuming a fingering exercise (now there's a pungent image) or before one of the p-units called up the stairs to tell me they wanted to hear some MUSIC.
Why am I telling you all this? Because I've found myself in recent days engaged in the same kind of evasion/self-distraction tactics -- efficient, sophisticated maneuvers, all designed to get me doing ANYTHING other sitting my butt down in front of my laptop and writing.
It happens, it's not a big hairy deal. If I don't pile on the ultradisciplinary, arts-fascist you-SHOULD-be-writing self-browbeating, I'll find my way back to it. Something will catch my interest. Even if it's only writing about not writing.
This afternoon -- not writing in la Plaza de España:
rws 7:28 AM [+]