Chapter 12: Back On Stage

Sunday 8th December 2013

This has not been a particularly good week.

I’m all right. I’m stating that first because several of you have demonstrated an impressive ability to turn a passing reference to feeling unwell into an imminent medical emergency. There is no emergency. I have a long-term medical condition that is managed with daily medication and, most of the time, has very little effect on my life. I study, practise, rehearse and do everything else without giving it much thought.

This is separate from the knee.

This week was not “most of the time.”

Stress can make the condition worse. Or rather, it can make the symptoms worse. Forgetting to take your medication also doesn’t help. Doing both simultaneously turns out to be an especially poor arrangement.

Not my finest piece of planning.

I am not going to say what the condition is. It is neither dramatic nor shameful; I simply don’t want my medical history on Tumblr. I have a diagnosis, medication and advice about managing it. Please do not send me lists of diseases, ask what I take or explain that your cousin had something which sounds similar.

The week was unpleasant. It was, I suppose, my own fault, but I spent rather too much of it in pain, tired and sleeping badly. That’s one of the worst things about it, actually. It makes you extremely tired, but can be so painful that you can’t sleep.

It is under control again now, though.

There is, however, some good news.

Law Attempted Murder And Failed

Remember the horrific Legal Foundations assignment?

Done. Submitted. Marked.

74%.

A First!

I stared at the mark for quite a long time because I had spent much of the assignment convinced I had misunderstood the question. The evidence suggests I hadn’t. Or perhaps I misunderstood it unusually effectively.

Either way, I will take that.

One mark on one assignment does not tell you very much about an entire degree. I am aware of this, but I am ridiculously pleased about it given how much of last week I spent being angry about badminton.

The feedback was useful. Strong analysis, good structure. I need to be more disciplined about distinguishing authorities that support a proposition directly from authorities which merely support something adjacent to it. Fair. I also apparently continue qualifying an argument long after I have made the point sufficiently well.

In other words, I need to learn when to stop talking.

I am sure everyone reading this is shocked.

The Celestial Quartet

We have a date. An actual performance date.

Saturday 18 January. Arts Centre foyer.

Maya, Ari, Finn and I will apparently be providing cultured musical accompaniment for people buying coffee, collecting tickets and wondering why the cellist looks terrified.

This has stopped being a pleasant idea about something we might do next term and become a commitment to play while other human beings sit approximately twelve feet away.

Different proposition.

We are planning Beethoven, Por una cabeza, Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Probably. Finn wants another piece. Finn always wants another piece. The rest of us are attempting restraint.

There will be proper details when we have them. For now: very excited. Slightly terrified. This appears to be becoming a recurring combination.

Badminton

There was a Wednesday.

Paul and I played together at the club. Ordinary badminton, at an ordinary intensity, with rests when needed. The knee behaved. We won some, lost some and argued about positioning.

He was wrong.

The natural order has been restored.

It was good to play without a tournament sitting somewhere in the background, making every practice game feel like evidence about whether we could win the next round. I still wanted to win the games we played. Obviously. But losing one did not require a substantial reconsideration of my life.

I recommend this arrangement. I may occasionally need reminding that I recommended it.

Friday

Friday was the University Orchestra Christmas Concert. Our first concert of the year, and my first proper orchestral concert since leaving the Youth Orchestra.

I have spent most of this term being happy simply to be in the orchestra. Fourth Desk. Learning, listening, trying to fit into a section where the players around me have established habits I am only beginning to understand. I knew we were working towards a concert. I had not properly considered how much actually performing it would matter.

Then Friday arrived, with concert clothes laid out on the bed and my music being checked approximately six times.

Pencil. Spare pencil. Rosin. Endpin stop.

Do I know how to play cello?

Unclear.

Concert nerves are different from debate nerves or badminton nerves. Debating feels like anticipation of conflict. Badminton feels like stored energy. With a concert, you know exactly what the music should sound like, and you know that one stupid movement of one finger can produce a noise which absolutely nobody involved intended.

Wonderful hobby.

We rehearsed in the afternoon. Some final adjustments, a little stopping and a reminder about a tempo change several people had apparently decided to interpret creatively.

I made it through. Only just.

Sitting still for long periods had been uncomfortable all week. Concentrating while tired and in pain was becoming difficult too. Playing in an orchestra requires rather more concentration than it sometimes appears to from the audience. You are reading, watching the conductor, listening across the orchestra, counting rests and adjusting to the people around you. Ideally, you do all of that without entering loudly in the middle of three bars of silence.

Doing it while part of your brain repeatedly announces ‘this hurts’ is challenging.

I considered withdrawing.

I probably should have told someone how bad the week had been. I didn’t. Partly because I didn’t want to make a fuss, partly because I didn’t want somebody deciding for me that I couldn’t play, and partly because saying it aloud would have made the possibility of missing the concert feel real.

So I rested for as long as I could, took my medication, put on my long black dress and went back to the Arts Centre.

The waiting backstage was horrible. It always is.

People who have been perfectly capable musicians throughout weeks of rehearsals suddenly become convinced they cannot play. Strings are tuned, retuned and checked again. Rosin appears from every pocket. Carefully marked music is studied as though somebody might have changed all the notes during the afternoon.

Is the A string always that tight? Is the bow usually that heavy? Where do my hands normally go?

There is nervous chatter, terrible jokes and occasional stretches of complete silence.

Then somebody tells you it is time.

And you walk on.

The Concert

The audience was not enormous. I am not going to pretend we sold the place out. Quite a few seats were empty. Parents, friends, students and a few people who had presumably seen a university orchestra concert advertised and thought, “Yes. That.”

Wonderful people.

Of course we would have preferred a full house. But the people who came had chosen to be there, and they listened. Properly listened. Once I was sitting down beneath the lights, the empty seats became considerably less interesting.

I adjusted my endpin, placed my cello between my knees and looked around. Music stands. Bows. Brass catching the light. The piano waiting at the front. My section around me.

For the first time all week, I felt calm.

The oboe gave us the A. We tuned. The conductor entered. The audience applauded.

Then that brief, perfect silence before the first note.

I had forgotten how much I love that moment. Then dozens of people make one decision together, and suddenly there is sound where half a second ago there was silence.

Our sound. We are making it. And I am inside it.

We opened with Sibelius’s Finlandia.

It begins in darkness. Musical darkness, obviously. Playing with the lights off would introduce several unnecessary difficulties. Low brass, low strings, tension and weight. Something enormous seems to be waking beneath the music.

From inside the cello section, you do not hear it quite as the audience does. You feel the sound through the instrument as well as hearing it around you. Your own part is one line, but it locks into the other lines until the orchestra seems to breathe together.

The pain did not vanish. Music is not magic, whatever people like to claim.

It was simply no longer the largest thing in the room.

After Finlandia came Grieg’s Piano Concerto.

Playing with a soloist is a different kind of concentration. You have to support without smothering and respond without chasing. The soloist is listening to us, we are listening to the soloist, and everybody is watching the conductor. A conversation involving rather a lot of people, most of whom are not allowed to speak.