Saturday night Erich and I got into a discussion on music, mainly classical. We both grew up listening to it. For me it was basically the only music that I knew exsisted untill 7th or 8th grade. I thought everything else was crap and not worth listening to. That changed with Mr V. playing Red Red Wine in class occasionally. I loved that song. I started to listen to 95.5 and 96.3 on the radio, but only very quietly when no one else was upstairs, because I was afriad they'd hear me. Odd as it is, I didn't want anyone to know that I was listening to popular music because I'd fought against it for so long. In middle school I didn't make the basketball team in 8th grade because violin lesson's conflicted with practice and I have never fully recoverd from that rejection. By the end of freshman year of high school I was totally disintersested in classical music. I refused to listen to it and playing it became a bore. I stopped taking violin lessons midway through freshman year so that I could focus more on sports. I didn't playing the orchestra senior year because of time and a new conductor.

Anyway, back to Erich. So we were talking about classical music and I decided to give it a try again. I found some Vivaldi on Blubbster, specifically the Violin Concerto in A Minor and immediatly missed playing it violin. Even though I haven't played in a long time, I can still finger the piece from memory. The music swept me away with it and I became immeresed in the memories of the bow flying over the strings as my fingers jumped all over the place. I searched for some more music, found some Bartok and remembered why I hated playing things by him so much. They are very weird and hard to play to simply put it. Bach's Bradenburg Concerto brought back memories of playing it in middle school for the Pregnacy Couseling Center Banquets. I found Beethoven's 5th Symphony and remembered playing ith when I was 15 or 16. A great piece to play when there are good accustics. I miss playing violin.

I wanted to play violin ever since I was 1 or so, but I guess I took my gift for granted. I rarely practiced long enough and hard enough and didnt' push myself. I had an terrific teacher. Ed is still one of the best violin teachers in the US, and I basically wasted my time with him. Ocassionally I'd practice for a few hours a day, but that only lasted for a week or two at a time and then I'd go back to maybe a 1/2 hour of practice a day, if that. Even without practice I was still doing very well. I was 1st chair, 2nd violin for a while. That's all behind me now and I have other things to focus on. I made that choice years ago and now I have to deal with it.