Train delays and violins

I write as I leave Euston at 20:40 on a Wednesday evening. This was not really my plan for the evening, having arrived at the station around 7.30.

Sadly though, it is a very common feature of the lives of those of us lucky enough to live on not one, but two, main arteries connecting the South to the rest of the country. I regularly take trains that terminate in Wales and Scotland, which does turn drunkenly falling asleep into a very expensive mistake. I fortunately, or unfortunately, only ever got stranded as far as Tamworth on such occasions. I think a little excursion to Edinburgh Waverley would have given considerably more enjoyable anecdotes.

The reason it is so common  to arrive home more than five hours after leaving work is that despite having invented the railway, this country has been unable to run them with any sort of logical sequence for the last 60 or so years.

This evening was a bit hot, which meant there was a points failure somewhere. Last week had the novel reason of a chemical spill in Crewe, which bafflingly only resulted in a 30 minute delay. Anyway, I’m sure the incoming government will fix it all in a jiffy.

I was rather looking forward to an hour practicing my violin, which I no longer really have the energy for. I do try to fit it all in, but I cricked my neck so badly earlier yesterday that I barely slept, finally getting up at 5.50 because I was too bored of waiting and having nothing but the pain. It is hard to feel at all positive, creative, or really present when the night has merely encroached, not released me into another world.

That is why I play the violin so badly and yet with so much enthusiasm. It is entirely somewhere else, and yet completely alive. I don’t understand the appeal of depressant drugs – why would I ever want to be less present? I suppose alcohol does that, a little. It takes away the overthinking edge so many people have. Violin, or any reasonably fiddly instrument, demands everything, much more than even the hardest of workouts. This is its joy, the simultaneous absence and presence. I can’t think, or worry, about anything other than trying to coordinate my arms, hands, fingers, reading the music,  and injecting the whole thing with feeling. Of course I fail to do all of this at the same time, ever. Even professional violinists never sound quite like Perlman, or Menuhin. I listen to the same piece in multiple recordings, and find the difference fascinating. I am quite obsessed with Vivaldi’s A minor concerto, particularly the presto I can’t play to save my life. What I would love is to one day play Beethoven’s opus 61 in D major, but I think it will be forever out of reach.

It doesn’t matter though. Playing anything brings me closer when I listen to my favourite concertos. I can visualise the bows, the vibrato, the overall structure and flow of the piece much more. The more I play , the more I am drawn to my instrument. I am a little terrified of anything happening to it. It is a violin every teacher I’ve had has envied, the current teacher possibly the most; he remarks on it often. I doubt I’d have quite the desire to play if it wasn’t like the Red Shoes of instruments. It asks me to play, giving me all its centuries of no doubt far better players.

It even infects and improves my running. I have developed a love of running as fast as possible down High Holborn with the main Sleeping Beauty waltz on full volume. I reached 14 kmh on the downhill the other day, on a sunny day at 7 am. It made my day, albeit I was a bit too buzzed to focus.

I’m not entirely sure that I’m happy with life, but I am trying to find ways and minutes and moments of something more to detract from the loneliness. How can I be lonely with music and the sound of my feet?