Freedom

He gathered his music together. A few pages fluttered to the floor. Always a few get away. The orchestra members, some of them, chatted a bit to their neighbors. Chad rarely spoke to anyone; his schedule didn’t allow it. He hurried to reclaim the sheets that slid across the floor. A shiny shod foot came down, narrowly missing his music but not his finger.

He screamed a vulgarity. Volume made of frustration as much as pain. He had a shift he needed to get to. Couldn’t be late. Still had to change his clothes. But, he muttered another profanity, it really hurt. His good hand reached for the music, his other hand, only then did he turn his eyes to it. His index finger throbbed. He sat on the floor. The stage had grown quiet with his initial outburst. He didn’t notice the attention directed his way. Only his finger.

What stops a musician? One who’s played since childhood, practicing daily, want to or not. One who didn’t quit, unlike the vast majority of students do once the novelty of the instrument wears off. One who, even as an adult, still plays, still practices, still pursues. What stops a musician?

An index finger that can’t hold down a string.

Chad’s shoulders slumped.

He didn’t need an x-ray. One would be taken, of course. But he already knew.

With markedly less fervor, he finished picking up his music. It wasn’t as if he was first chair. He would miss playing more than anyone would miss him being there. He dodged the comments of concern and offers to help. He, more than anyone else there, could assess the damage. Everyone knew that. He had no reason to allow anyone to look at the rapidly swelling, still throbbing finger. It slowed his movements. The usually rote business of jamming music into a folder and instrument into a case took thought. Nonetheless, he still, like always, hurried through people, chairs, and stands toward the side door. He opened it with his back, his right hand carrying his things, his left still carefully sliding through his coat sleeve.

Once settled in the driver’s seat, he paused, sighed. He decided not to take time to change into scrubs until later. He turned the key in the ignition. Tonight, he’d be both patient and staff.

He fiddled with the dial on the radio. Usually, he listened to the kind of music he played. Classical. It was his passion. So many melody lines and harmonies and themes, layers of sounds and rhythms, crescendos and decrescendos. So much to blast into his ever-turning mind. But not tonight. Violin, though his first love, wasn’t his only. When no one was listening, his fingers had been known to find their way around the blacks and whites of a keyboard. That was self-taught. For him that was an instrument where there would be no music to read. A violinist can’t read both bass and treble at the same time. But he could conceive of them.

He’d never listened much to piano music though, and certainly not jazz. But that’s where the dial settled. Harry Connick, Jr. jamming away. There is a certain passion in improv. But that’s not what Chad thought of at that moment. For the first time, when he listened to that man master his instrument and play from the heart in a way that Chad never had, what came to mind was freedom.

No confines of music printed on a page. No need for a director to keep everyone together. Just a feeling. Wild creativity. Intimate knowledge of the keys and chords, how to play them, mastery of the instrument based on a lifetime of intimacy with it, and something else. Freedom. Freedom to play, really play.

Chad danced his fingers across an air keyboard.

Ouch.

There would be no freedom tonight. But there would be someday. He’d set his finger tonight. It’d heal. He’d exercise it, it’d gain strength. Athletes have recovered from worse, so have musicians. And when he played again, likely even on his way to recovery, he’d add a new element. He’d seen fiddle players butcher his art. But contrast that with soloists who play not just with technique, vibrato and bowing, but beyond that, more than that. With their whole body, having accomplished the rudiments of playing, they make the music their own, the instrument an extension of their physical body, and they make music. They play with enviable abandon. They enrapture the observer.

They can add notes; fill out a piece; make it more that it can ever be on flat, white paper. Yet true to the composition, never compromising, or even embellishing a piece.

Chad found a parking space, turned off the car. He didn’t really have the time to lean back as he did. He raised his hurt hand, holding an imaginary violin. He placed it under his chin. An imaginary bow pulled across imaginary strings. An imaginary finger that was not injured worked the board. He closed his eyes and, in his mind, he heard the melody, and all the extras to go along with it. A flurry of notes. Played well, played clear. Music played, made, with a passion he didn’t know he possessed. Improvising he didn’t know he could do.

Freedom.