Finding My Way Back to the Notes

There are some things we leave behind that never really leave us. For me, music has always been one of them. My love of music began when I was a child, and although classical music has always held a special place in my heart, my listening has never stayed neatly inside one genre. I love jazz and so many other kinds of music, and I have always been fascinated by the way a particular instrument, melody, or piece of music can make you stop whatever you're doing and simply listen. Music has been part of the landscape of my life for as long as I can remember.

For a while, I made music myself. Through elementary school, junior high, and part of high school, I played the flute. Somewhere along the way, I taught myself to play some piano. There were other instruments too, including a violin that passed briefly through my hands. I suppose I have always been drawn to instruments and curious about what it might feel like to make the music I loved listening to. Then life did what life tends to do. It got busy, responsibilities took over, and the instruments became quieter. But my love of music never really did.

About twenty years ago, I found my way to a cello. I began taking private lessons, and I still remember my teacher telling me that I was a natural. He couldn't believe I had never played the cello before. In a strange way, neither could I, because from the moment I began playing it, something about the cello felt familiar. There was something about its sound and the physical experience of playing it that connected with me in a way other instruments hadn't.

You don't simply hear a cello when you're holding one; you feel it. The sound travels through the instrument and into your body. You feel the vibration beneath your fingers and against you as you play, and there is something about that deep, rich sound that has always soothed my soul. I loved sitting with the instrument, drawing the bow across the strings and realizing that I was actually creating that sound myself.

And then, once again, life got in the way. Circumstances changed, I had to sell my cello, and what I thought might be a temporary pause somehow became twenty years.

Now here I am at 55 years old, and I have decided that twenty years is quite long enough. I'm getting another cello. I'm finding another teacher. And in many ways, I'm beginning all over again.

I'm sure there will be scales and sore fingers and plenty of sounds that bear absolutely no resemblance to the beautiful music I hear in my head. I'm probably going to discover just how much I have forgotten over the last twenty years. But strangely enough, I'm looking forward to that part too. There is something exciting about being 55 and realizing that I am still allowed to be a beginner. I can still learn something difficult. I can still be terrible at something for a while. I can still surprise myself.

We spend so much of adulthood being responsible for things—careers, families, homes, bills, obligations, and other people. The practical pieces of living have a way of filling every available corner, and sometimes the things we once loved get tucked away. Not because we stopped loving them, but because we tell ourselves we'll come back to them someday. Twenty years ago, I couldn't have known exactly when my someday would arrive. Apparently, it looks a lot like being 55.

I don't know where this journey with the cello will take me, and for once, I don't think it needs to take me anywhere in particular. I don't need a grand plan for it. I simply want to learn to play again. I want to sit in my own home with a cello between my knees, draw the bow across the strings, feel that familiar vibration again, and slowly learn how to create something beautiful.

And that is also why I'm starting this blog. I have always loved writing, just as I have always loved music, so The Unexpected Cellist seems like a lovely place to bring those two things together. I'll write about learning the cello again, the music I'm discovering, the cellists who inspire me, the pieces I fall in love with, the instrument itself, and probably anything else that falls under the wonderfully broad category of “all things cello.” There may be stories from lessons, thoughts about music, things I learn along the way, and undoubtedly a few tales about notes that went terribly wrong.

Mostly, though, I'm doing this just for the fun of it. There is no grand purpose behind this blog and no carefully mapped destination. It's simply a place to write about something I love while learning to do something I have wanted to return to for a very long time. Maybe that is one of the gifts of getting older: realizing that everything we choose to do doesn't have to be practical, productive, profitable, or impressive. Sometimes we are allowed to do something simply because it brings us joy.

So this is the beginning of The Unexpected Cellist: a 55-year-old woman, a cello, a love of writing and music, and a very long pause between lessons. I have no idea where any of it will lead, and I think I rather like it that way.

I'm just ready to play again.