Tag: fear

Yesterday, I fastened my face-mask, laced up my old pair of sneakers, picked up my violin and walked to the river. I’d had a case of the stabbies* for the past few days and I just needed to make noise. Since we’re all in an indefinite lockdown, and my neighbours don’t deserve to hear a novice violin player at 10am on a Monday , I thought I would find a river tree and practice bowing on some open strings.

Two weeks ago I told my violin teacher that I was very motivated to not sound scratchy. She told me that the awful sound akin to a dying cat is caused by a number of things. One of the causes is hesitation. If one moves the bow too slowly over the strings, or if one hesitates, the violin transforms from an instrument of elevation to an instrument of sadism. Ok, an exaggeration, but I am very motivated to not sound scratchy.

It was probably not the best idea to stand beneath a eucalyptus tree where three adolescent magpies (as hostile as human adolescents, but with less Tiktok and more beak) glared at me. Do magpies dive bomb violins? They can certainly poop on violins. Thankfully, I emerged from my practice session unmolested by magpies and any of their winged dinosaur counterparts, but my session got me thinking about movement.

It is only through movement that we find our balance and our momentum. The principle is the same for riding a bicycle. As a perfectionist, I have always been afraid of starting anything, lest I fail. And then when I do start, I am afraid of sharing my work lest I be judged.

Learning the violin is a teacher in more ways than one. Usually I show people the final products of my writing and art. I have drawers filled with half finished craft projects that I abandoned because they weren’t good enough. A shout out to Bec who is still waiting for a baby beanie for her newborn son (I think he is around 8 years old now). I have abandoned writing on scores of USBs. The thing with the violin is that you can’t hide practice. You can’t emerge from a cocoon with amazing pieces of work. People hear you in all your scratchy awfulness. They witness the process and the effort.

Perfection is the master killer. Hesitation is usually an accessory to this crime. At the heart of hesitation is good old fear. Every artist and writer I have met has struggled with fear. We want to wait until our work is good enough, until the balance of probabilities shows us that we will not be rejected. To live in a space of hesitation is a horrible feeling. As a recovering Catholic I was raised to believe that purgatory was real and I imagine that hesitation is a sort of Catholic purgatory (with fewer unbaptised babies).

Worse, we wait for inspiration to get us moving. But inspiration comes from swan diving into movement. It comes from immersing yourself into the mire of life, from reading everything you can get your hands on and throwing yourself into every experience that might move you. It comes from experimentation, bad art and bad poetry.

The irony is that when I lose my fear of being scratchy, and use the length of the bow, I actually hit those notes. Ok, enough tortured violin metaphors, you get the idea.

So this week, I encourage all you fellow creatives to just keep moving. If you must be scratchy, be scratchy. Move fast and fearless, make noise and commit crimes against metaphors. Take blurred photos, draw out of proportion, tear up the rule of thirds and cultivate clichés.

Just keep movin’.

*Stabby: (noun and adjective) an overwhelming feeling of rage, in which , given the right circumstances, you could stab every person you met. (noun)- She had a case of the stabbies. (adjective): The stabby woman broke a violin over her neighbour’s head.