One of the silver linings from COVID is it can bring people together. Here is a wonderful blog from Lara, just on the other side of the Pacific. Her inspirational prose caught my eye on facebook and she was kind enough to followup with her story …thankyou Lara you’re a treasure.
You can’t fix people, But you can fix violins, And the people can play the violins And that can fix them! So… SAME THING!
Lara J. 2021
Love of my Life
by Lara J
I’m a late bloomer, or just plain late, I’m not sure which. There have been a few great loves in my life, but the best ones seemed to be reserved for me to enjoy after I could make a passel of youthful mistakes and bad decisions, trial runs at things that seemed like good decisions at the time, and other sundry follies of youth. Better late than never, they say, and maybe I was supposed to mature enough to truly appreciate the gifts that were coming my way.
The biggest love of my life is my daughter, who didn’t come into my life until my 30’s. The second is my wonderful partner Mark, who I met at 50! The third great love of my life is violins. I have to use the plural form of the word, because I can’t imagine just having one violin. I didn’t know this happy addiction was approaching me. It sneaked up from behind on me, to be honest. I didn’t get bitten by the violin bug until my mid 50’s, and it’s hard to believe it’s only been a year plus a couple of months since that happened.
It was smack in the middle of 2020, which needs no explanation, as a year to remember. In a moment of desperation to get my mind off of politics and the pandemic, I scrolled through YouTube and happened upon the videos of Ask Olaf the Violin Maker. I watched one, and was intrigued. I watched another, and was entranced. I watched another, and another, and another, until I had binge watched them all. Suddenly I wanted to fix violins. I wanted to play violins. I had to have a violin. I would like to blame (and thank) Olaf, but I think it might have been in the back of my mind for a long time, and just needed the right catalyst. I still blame him, and thank him.
Since then I have bought or been given well over a dozen violins in various states of disrepair, and learned how to repair them. I taught myself by watching as many different luthier-made videos as I could find on YouTube, reading articles on the internet, scrolling through the violin forums, and just doing it. I prayed a lot when working on my first violin. I was so nervous, I was shaking. It ended up being a success, and that hooked me. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, and I definitely learned where the phrase “fiddle with it” came from, because it seemed I could keep tweaking things forever on each violin I worked on. Good sound was the most important thing to me, but I am also a visual artist, so it had to look nice.
Like Oprah with her cars, I found so much happiness with violins I wanted others to have them. You get a violin! You get a violin! You too! I parted with the ones I could part with, giving some to family members, some to a school, and one to an animal shelter auction. I haven’t sold any yet, but I may. I still have more violins than I probably should. They each have a different voice, and I love them all like they are my children. If I don’t play one of them in a reasonable amount of time, I miss it, and feel that joy of reaching for it again when I do.
I know I’m still a beginner. I’m a hobbyist, not a luthier. I still have a lot to learn about violin repair. I’m practicing my playing every day, too, and improving constantly, but I’m no Hilary Hahn. I’m aiming for it, though! But the point is that I love it tremendously, and I get so much joy out of it, that I thank God every day I get to wake up and play.
My facebook friends know what has happened to me. They tag me in violin videos and photos. I love them for it. One of my friends recently tagged me in a photo of beautiful old violins that needed repair, and I commented how I wanted to fix them! Then I told him it made me think of an advertisement for a violin shop. It would go like this:
You can’t fix people,
But you can fix violins,
And the people can play the violins
And that can fix them!
So…
SAME THING!