Ever had one of those moments when you felt like you had done and see all this before, and everything was happening all over again? Luckily, I had such a moment last night. But unlike a typical déjà vu moment, I knew exactly when and where I had last experienced it.
I attended the first rehearsal for the San Francisco Bay Area Rainbow Symphony last night after a week apprehension due to the difficulty of the pieces we will be performing. I don't know which skill I have retained more - two years of learning the cello, four years removed; or ten years of the violin, fifteen years ago. Finally, I chose the cello since that is the instrument I prefer to play at this moment.
When 7:30 pm arrived last night and the group of about 50 musicians gathered, all the sensations and sentiments came flooding back. It wasn't that I could recall a specific memory from six years of orchestra during high school and college, it was simply the tingling in my heart when the concert master signalled the oboist to play an A note for tuning. The familiarity continued with the conductor's very first downbeat of the evening and even the occasional (okay, fine, maybe frequent) dissonance of pitch as we struggled to sight read masterpieces by Schubert and Mendelssohn.
The entire experience was almost surreal, and despite stumbling through many parts that moved too quickly for my skills, I knew I had rediscovered something that I had missed for a very long time.
At the end of two and a half hours, my neck was stiff from tilting it at an odd angle to read the music and my arms were aching from repeatedly jumping from the low C to the high A with the bow, but my heart and mind soared beyond the high A like a kite in blistering winds and couldn't be coaxed down even late at night as I lay in bed.
Now, a day later, returning to work has brought me down to cloud seven. I can't wait until next Wednesday when the symphony meets again.
I just have to practice, practice, practice...
