Support Group

A few weeks ago, I had a dream that I’d started a support group for violinists. Everyone wanted to join. We all knew that playing the violin was not one of life’s great hardships, but we found comfort in knowing that others were having struggles similar to our own.

We commiserated over a lifetime spent climbing and/or sliding down an invisible, ambiguous mountain; trying to remember what made you want to play in the first place and looking for that anywhere in your adult life; wondering if you have any business at all performing for others or showing young people how it’s done; the mixed-up feelings you get when you play the orchestral accompaniment of the Brahms violin concerto or one of your old classmates gets a great gig.

We asked each other, what’s been working for you, recently? What exercises, what practice routines, what breakthroughs have you made? We shared our fears that we would never solve the problems that vex us most, that we would forever be struggling students inside the bodies of seasoned professionals, just good enough to fool almost everyone.

We talked about the truths that playing the violin forced us to confront in ourselves. We wondered who we would be without the violin. We attempted to trace the origins of our ambition. We wondered if those we wished to impress could possibly be more proud of us, or if they would ever be proud at all.

We held hands, cried together, laughed at ourselves, and left feeling less alone and ready to dedicate ourselves all over again to this mysterious wooden box which beckoned to us at such an early age, before we were old enough or clever enough to stop and ask, “at what cost?” And if we had, we never would have known the mountain.