Such Ones As Us

Dickersons don’t sing; they belt.  And usually in at least 3-part harmony.  I remember sitting around the campfire at Mt. Rainier as a kid, wishing I knew just one complete phrase of Sweet By and By so that I could begin carving out an alto line to call my own.  My mom and her three older siblings formed the foundation of the Dickerson family belt-fests: David, with his cheerful, crackling tenor, Becky, a gutsy alto, my mom, with her clear, crisp soprano, and Cyndy, always carefully harnessing, to various degrees, her powerhouse super-soprano.  My cousins and I used to nudge each other in the church pew when Cyndy really let ‘er rip at the end of some choral piece at Christmastime.  There was no prouder moment to be a Dickerson.

The whole Dickerson clan used to gather at least three times each year: once at Ohanapecosh, a magical campground at Mt. Rainier, once at a rented beach house in Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast, and for Christmas, rotating between the siblings’ homes.  These get-togethers were easily the highlight of my childhood, and I’m pretty sure many of my cousins would say the same.  The chemistry between the four siblings (our parents) was glorious.  It was endlessly entertaining to watch them banter back and forth.  Aunt Cyndy, with her quick wit and a tendency to yammer, was at the center of it all.

It is hard to say how much I adore my Aunt Cyndy.  Really hard.  I think I surpassed her in height when I was ten.  She is a tiny bundle of wit, charm, warmth and fun.  I have loved being around her since I was a little girl.  When our family got our first desktop (circa 1993?), Cyndy, who has been an IT specialist since forever, came over and taught us how to boot up using the C prompt.  Then she gave us a tutorial in Minesweeper and Solitaire.  Her son, Erik, was the first baby I ever held, and she the first pregnant lady I ever knew.

Last Wednesday, I spent the afternoon with her up in Northern Idaho, where she lives with her husband, Dave.  Just the day before, her doctor had advised her to quit her job at Washington State University; the cancer she has been battling for the last six years was finally catching up with her.  She told me that, ten years before she was diagnosed, she and her doctor suspected that she might be showing early signs of colon cancer, but she was told by her insurance company that she was “too young” and “the wrong gender” for that type of cancer.  In fact, colon cancer is the number one cancer killer of women.  Breast cancer is second on the list, thanks in large part to advances in early detection methods.  By the time Cyndy’s cancer was diagnosed, it was already in Stage IV.

Cyndy is not shy to talk about her condition.  Whenever possible, she and her husband spread this message: if and when you have a problem, stand up and fight.  No one else is going to do it for you.

As we talked, I marveled at my aunt.  Although she recognizes with painful clarity that her insurance company is to blame for her situation, she doesn’t seem to harbor a trace of bitterness.  Over the last six years, she has demonstrated that her good humor is not just skin-deep.  Her update emails to sixty-some friends and family members have always been peppered with hope, smiles, and triple exclamation points.  She knew her days were numbered, but she didn’t care to spend those days crying.  The most amazing thing to me, though, is how she has seemed to redouble her interest and investment in the lives of others.  She is often the first person to comment on my blog or facebook posts, and her words are always clever and thoughtful.  I would totally understand if she wanted to spend her days checking off a long bucket list and making every moment count, but instead, she chooses to maintain and even strengthen her ties to all of us.  It seems she has discovered a deeper way to live life to the fullest.

Our visit on Wednesday was abundantly cheerful, reminiscent of those trips to the coast and Mt. Rainier.  Cyndy treated us to many signature eye-rolls, stories, and those laughs where she sort of rubs her nose.  Her spirit is so vibrant, her courage so inspiring, her personality so unique (yet so clearly rooted in Dickerson culture), her laugh so infectious, and her heart so warm and caring, I know that she will always be an integral part of my sense of family, my sense of me.

All you nerds will appreciate this.  Well, all you music nerds.  This is a story about what a nerd I am, and what a nerd you are, if you like it.

Nearly five years ago, my 20-year old mind was blown.  I was lucky enough to hear the Beaux Arts Trio when they came through Cleveland, and those men changed my life forever so far.  Some of my longtime followers might remember this Myspace post:

There really aren’t words to describe what I am experiencing. This is one of those concerts where you sit here the whole time, thinking to yourself, “I cannot believe I was actually considering skipping this.”

Three distinguished-looking men walk confidently onto the stage. They bow, flip their coat tails behind them and take their seats. In one fluid motion, Daniel Hope and Antonio Meneses bring their bows to the string and effortlessly produce a taut string of sound, pulling me into their world. The legendary Menahem Pressler sneaks in with a sparkling carpet of harmony for his string-playing colleagues. He leans back, away from the keyboard, and looks Daniel in the eye as they cadence together. I realize that I’ve stopped breathing.

Their collective sound is an organ, not a piano trio. They use vibrato sparingly, and when they start to wiggle their fingers ever so slightly, it is the most heavenly thing. Daniel has the sweetest, most honest tone I think I’ve ever heard. I never knew one could create a dark, warm color on the E-string. My heart is aching.

Every note is a word, every slide a plea, every accent a moan. Every pizzicato is important, every hairpin is a gesture, every pianissimo is a secret trembling with excitement. Their Shostakovich is wild. I didn’t know it was possible to be so flamboyant and yet hit all the notes. Daniel is wailing now. It’s almost grotesque, how much he is vibrating way up there on the E-string. We all know he could make a prettier sound, but would that be Stalin’s Russia?

I don’t want this to end. They are bowing at the end of the first half, and there are tears in my eyes because I am starting to understand what I have just breathlessly witnessed.

The Schubert is out of this world. I think these must be the most versatile musicians I have ever encountered. They have an impressively wide spectrum of color and texture. I have been on the edge of my seat for the entire concert, wondering, “What happens next?” Everything they say with their instruments is sincere.

Now the crowd is going wild, clapping in unison as if we’re at a ballgame. The Beaux Arts trio finally returns to the stage for the encore: a movement from Dvorak’s “Dumky”. My eyes again become blurry when, in the silence before Daniel’s final pizzicato, I can hear rain pattering on the roof. He has the audience wrapped around his strong, adroit finger.

See?  Mind: blown.  But the thing that has made a lasting impact on my day-to-day life comes from the phrase, “Every note is a word.”  I was enthralled by the way their playing sounded like human language; there were edges, there was inflection, there was laughter.  Not only were there consonants and vowels, there was a variety of each.  I really felt like I could almost make out what they were saying to each other, and it was the most delicious kind of eavesdropping.

What followed was the natural “I wanna do that” phase.  I made a list of syllables that I could practice imitating while playing scales, one syllable per pitch. What was once limited to legato/marcato/spiccatobecame Endless Possibility.  After going down the list, I felt like I could do anything.  Here’s the list (and I still do this from time to time):

(quarter note=70 or so)

half notes:

PAHHH

PUGGH

MWA

FWHUM (famously used by the Marrakesh quartet in the third movement of Haydn op. 76 no. 5)

YUM

HHAAHHH

dotted quarter-eighth:

TAHH-dee DAHH-dee

TAHH-uhm DAHH-uhm

neee-YUH

eighth-dotted quarter:

Daht-deee

sixteenth notes:

dak

yah

HO

nee

FAH

How does PAHHH differ from PUGGH, you might ask?  How, exactly, do you make your instrument speak the words FWHUM or nee?  Fortunately, you don’t have to know how to do it–your hands already do.  Your body is smarter than you give it credit for.

My former teacher, Bill Preucil, often spoke of this direct communication between the brain and the fingers, a command line that sort of bypasses the frontal lobe.  ”You just tell yourself to do it, and your hands somehow know what to do.”  Of course, this works best if you have some previous experience playing the violin, but it does work.

I remember coming in for one of my lessons and complaining about my technique.  My bow hadn’t been going straight for weeks, and I didn’t know what was happening to me!  I used to be able to do this!!  He listened politely as I expressed my concerns.  When I was finished, he said, “Well, just make your bow go straight.”  And I did.

Direct yourselves, nerds.

A lot of people were up in arms recently over an article which stated that musicians had it pretty good.  The article listed “orchestra musician” as one of three relatively low-stress, high-paying jobs, along with yoga instructors and massage therapists.  Many rotten tomatoes were thrown at the writer for claiming that an orchestra musician did not have to deal with urgent deadlines and that they found their music to be spiritually fulfilling.  Now, as someone who once tried to apply eye make-up while crying right before a rehearsal, I am not here to tell you that the job is all fun and spiritual fulfillment.  I would, however, say this to the rotten tomato throwers: stress is not something to be proud of.

As my favorite yoga instructor likes to say, sometimes we think that our stress defines us.  We are reluctant to let it go; we’re better at hanging on.  But then there’s a wake-up call that kindly informs us that our beloved stress is actually killing us.  That’s when we get serious about taking deep breaths, exercising, bubble baths and other stress-reducing activities.  Unfortunately, stress management can easily sneak into the category of “to-do”, which can sometimes become a list of things that never get done.

When I find myself in this particular boat, I am glad when the occasional lifesaver-thought floats across my mind.  These thoughts are mysterious creatures; I don’t know where they hide or what instigates their emergence.  They are things I once knew, maybe even mantras I used to repeat, but they have slipped into my uncatalogued archives.  Then they drop by, unannounced, and my shoulders relax and I start breathing again.  So I thought, maybe if I wrote them down, I could keep them all there in my mental living room.

• The magic words were spoken during a yoga class my mom and I attended a few years ago.  I didn’t even notice that I was worrying about a hundred things until the teacher said, “Realize that, in this moment, everything is perfect.”  I remember looking out the window, feeling that all my problems were somewhere out there, in the future, maybe even imaginary, and that inside the room was this perfect moment of stillness, safety and warmth.  Since that day, I have found it so powerful to recognize the perfection in each moment.  My favorite is when I’m taking a shower in the morning and getting all worked up over all the bad things that might possibly befall me sometime in the future.  The words cross my mind like an airplane banner and I say, “Ellen, you’re in the shower.”
• When practicing the violin, I find that it is best to treat it like a matter of life and death.  You have to practice runs and shifts and string crossings as though, if you miss them in the performance, you will soar into the crowd like a stray acrobat.  When you are trying to fall asleep at night, however, you need to get real.  You must realize that IT’S JUST MUSIC.  It has to be capitalized because you need to say it slowly and forcefully, so as to drown out all the unhelpful chatter that’s keeping you awake.
• If you think about stress from a scientific standpoint, you realize that we modern humans are doing it wrong.  Stress hormones, such as cortisol and norepinephrine, are supposed to be for truly dangerous situations.  It’s kind of embarrassing, when you think about it, that these hormones are coursing through our bodies when all we’re doing is sitting at a desk and clicking buttons on TurboTax.  That’s why I like to remind myself from time to time that I’m not being chased by a lion.  That usually sends those hormones back to their caves, tails between their legs.
• I’ve been reading Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution. The book describes Masanobu’s unique farming method in which the farmer basically stands back and lets Mother Nature do her thang.  Masanobu began developing this “do-nothing” method after a particularly lucid moment when he was a young man.  One morning, after a restless night of wandering, he saw a heron squawk and fly over the harbor.  Instantly, his doubts and worries vanished and he mumbled the words, “In this world there is nothing.”  Maybe these words sound depressing to you, but when I say them out loud to myself, it’s as if there were a hundred angry men gripping the throats of a hundred other men in my brain, and suddenly everybody lets go.
• This one has the power to turn my limbs to jelly every single time.  Although it is useful in many situations, I usually employ it when I need to reply to 15 emails and return 10 phonecalls.  Each time I receive an email or voicemail, I attach a heavy ball and chain to my ankle, which makes daily chores (digging ditches, chipping stone) very lugubrious indeed.  Then it hits me, usually quite suddenly: You are free.  That’s when I realize that the chains were never really there, and that I am an independent individual, free to move about the house as I please.  I can’t account for it, but that is also the time that I finally get back to all those nice people.

Before I wrap up, I want to say one last thing to all the rotten-tomato throwers:  Always somebody gonna be wrong on the internet.  Just remember that.

The forest seemed to be smiling, its hands folded on its chest. Nature always seems to smile, not with pleasure, but with a sort of ancient wisdom. Through night, through rain, through cold, even through death it smiles. It knows about seasons, about cycles. I was clearly the only living thing in 700 acres that was wondering what to do next. 

I got this idea that I was walking through my mind. Since I saw no other hikers for an hour and a half, it was easy to slip into this metaphor. I imagined that I was tip-toeing through my thoughts, my memories, my ideas about the way things are and the way things ought to be. And the air was crisp and cool.

The only woodland creatures I encountered were mosquitos, but I felt strangely honored to be considered acceptable feasting material in this great and complex, living and breathing entity we call Nature. It’s the least one can do when sitting atop the food chain.

I was astounded by the beautiful serenity of trees displaced by puny streams, their roots sticking comically up in the air, underbrush still clinging to the base, hoping to start a new ground at an 80 degree angle.

Not so long ago, I read somewhere that Nature holds endless metaphors for life, which seems a bit inside out, since we ARE Nature and can’t really be separated from it. Nevertheless, when you are out on a hike by yourself, you cannot help but end up with at least 5 metaphors for your life. I know I came up with about 7, none of which are particularly useful to mankind and do not, therefore, need to be repeated on the interwebs.

It is enough to say that, with every step on the carpet of needles, I could feel the Smile sinking deeper and deeper into my bones. 

I am 10 years old, and this is my first time swimming in a lake. My hands will smell like mildew for the next two weeks. Still a few feet from the shore (the lake is sea-like), I see hundreds of little black tadpoles swarming around my feet. Tonight, when I close my eyes to sleep, I will see tadpoles swirling, swirling, until the swarms fade to black, and black gives way to the vibrantly colorful dreams of a child.

I push away from the bank. The water is chilly, but the day is summery enough that I don’t mind. As I move slowly through the water, I hit a warm spot. I look around to see if I have just left a shaded area. I push on into the sunny water, but am met with an icy patch. I am disappointed; I thought the rest of the vast lake would be Nature’s hot tub. My big toe dips into the mud, and I find myself in another warm spot. I linger.

Life, or at least my life, seems to be comprised of patches of joy and patches of lethargy. There are days that I can’t hide the bounce in my step, and there are days when I drag my feet. There are days when I feel independent and strong, and nights when I wish I were crawling into bed next to someone who adored me. Some days, I think I must be Heifetz-incarnate (ok, so there was only one day like that), and days when I wonder how I got here (countless). Sometimes, I gain great pleasure from organizing the cans in a cupboard, and sometimes I am bored out of my skull during an action-packed thriller. Some mornings, I want green tea and yoga. Some mornings, I start eating chocolate chip cookies before I even hit the shower. Some days, I find people’s differences inspiring and wonderful, and some days, they cause me great anxiety and I wish we were the products of cookie-cutters. I go through weeks of listening only to Brahms, and suddenly I start skipping to the next Coldplay song on my Shuffle. There are times when I can’t wipe the silly grin off my face and days when everyone tells me I look tired, even though I’ve had plenty of sleep. 

On the surface, life looks more or less the same from day to day, but the truth is that most people have days when they desperately don’t want to go to work, as well as days when life looks bright despite the clouds. Precisely because of the ups and downs, I see life as a wonderful, beautiful, miraculous gift when I am feeling good. When I am feeling less than good, the ups and downs are precisely what make life so aggravating, so draining.

Curious as to the size of this warm spot, I press on toward the center of the lake. I like how the water feels as I cut through it with my arms and legs.