On the cello...

I have bruises on the inside of my left thigh, thanks to my newest life-enriching pursuit. The cello, which I have been playing for all of a week, is held in balance courtesy of the thighs, and it seems mine are susceptible to bruising. But, except for how that looks when I wear shorts, I don't really care.

I've only been at it for a week, but I'm taking great pleasure in learning this instrument. I have for the first time in my life learned to read some musical notes and am getting my first insights into the other funny stuff that shows up in music, such as how tempo is delineated.

All along, I thought reading music was some kind of outrageously hard thing to do -- like reading chinese characters or something -- and I'm surprised to find out this is not the case. My mother -- let's just call her Cruella going forward, shall we? -- was fairly persistent in shooing me away from music as a child. One of the things she told me was that I was not smart enough to learn how to read it. I don't know what that was all about, but the result is that I believed it must be outrageously hard to learn music, especially if you didn't learn it as a child.

And yet here I am, without any effort, a week into my little experiment with the cello, and I'm having no problem looking at a score and saying, "F-sharp, E, E, D, F-sharp, E, A." So that's been a surprise.

But nothing has prepared me for the surprise of how satisfying it is to hit a note on the cello itself. First, however, a little backstory:

It was nearly 10 years ago that I first picked up a cello. It belonged to Breanna, the daughter of my friend Lesha, who recently died. Breanna was 9 at the time, and she showed me how to sit, gave me a little instruction on holding the bow and then I took great pleasure for a few minutes in pulling the bow across the strings. I never forgot the feeling. Nor my desire to learn the instrument.

The day that Lesha died, I had stumbled across a violin repair shop here in town, and found myself looking longingly into the window at the instruments. I thought about Breanna's cello, and I wondered whether she was still playing. I also wondered, then, about how Lesha was doing, as it had been a long time since we'd been in touch.

The next day, I learned that Breanna, who graduated from high school last year, had found her mother dead in bed that morning, killed by having too big a heart. And though I'm not into mysticism, I found it curious that I had been thinking about Lesha and Breanna and the cello that very day, when it had been a while since I had thought of them.

Many years ago, I made a little promise to myself that when someone for whom I've cared deeply is "subtracted" from my life through death, I will find some way of remembering them by "adding" something enriching. The death of my brother turned into the motivation to attend graduate school and radically alter my life's work. The death of my aunt last year prompted me to accept an invitation to reconnect with some family members I've long cherished but with whom I'd been out of contact.

Lesha's death combined with a longing I've been experiencing more strongly in the past couple years: to learn a musical instrument. The process of such "adding" for me is a matter of immediacy; it's a recognition of the fleeting nature of life and a choice to do something about a desire rather than allowing it to stay latent. So, given how my thoughts had turned to the cello the very day of her death, I thought about it for two weeks or so and then made the call.

Last week, I had my first lesson. This past Friday, I played a rather plodding and off-key version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" for some friends who came to dinner. There was, admist amused laughter, an encouraging round of applause. Several months hence, I hope to give a performance of something a little more erudite.

At one point, I found myself waxing philosophic with one of them -- The Debutante's friend who looks like Kate Winslet -- about the powerful sensation of playing this instrument. No doubt, part of it was the wine talking -- that would be the part where I equated the sensitivity of the instrument to that of the clitoris. But most of what I found myself saying was the truth.

I have picked up many instruments in my life and given them a novice's try. I have had countless interactions with guitars, even learning a couple chords and strum strumming away. I've had my moments with a coronet and a clarinet. There's my harmonica, on which my tied tongue prevents any real progress. And, naturally, there's been all sorts of drumming.

Never in any of these experiences have I felt so thoroughly captivated as I am by the cello. Even on the merits of how it is held -- between the thighs and up against the chest -- it is provocative. Sitting this way, with that resonating wood contacing my body, I feel each note vibrating through me from head to toe. When I hit a bad note, the cello lets me know in feeling just as much as in hearing. It's punishing enough to make me wince. But when I hit the right notes, it is rewarding beyond measure. (Really, it does make sense to compare it to the clitoris -- even when I'm not drunk.)

It is an instrument that begs to be touched and played. The sensuous curves of its body, the elegant stretch of its fingerboard, the artistic scroll atop. All of this speaks to the latent - though well-explored -- woodworker in me.

And its sound? Well, it's the most lovely of the strings, I think. Not so hop-along as the guitar, not so touchy and neurotic as the violin, not so weighty and imposing as the bass. You don't have to be Yo-Yo Ma to make it sing (but I'll bet it's FABULOUS to be Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello).

After my little performance Friday night, I did something I'm not supposed to do: I let my friends play my cello. (I'm not sure *why* I'm not supposed to do that, but I've been warned dutifully by all the books that it's a "bad" thing.) In my opinion, something so pleasurable is to be shared as much as possible. So I've happily let Dr. M, The Deb and S2 give it a go. They each had different reactions, but I think they all took away an understanding of what I was trying to tell them about the instrument's ability to move its player. Dr. M even told me the cello would keep me company in my life as a single woman, and I suspect there's a great deal of truth in that.

The Deb's Kate-Winslet-look-alike friend suggested I use my little spiel about the sensuous nature of this instrument as a way to pick up girls. I can see her point; it might even be effective. But here's my thought on that: Learning to play and relate to this marvelous instrument -- a process that frustrates as much as it rewards right now -- feels like an expression of passion for my life, not a parlor trick to increase my viability in the dating scene.

As a gift I've given to myself, taking up the cello -- and reclaiming a childhood desire to learn an instrument -- seems a fitting way to remember an old friend no longer with us.

Life is fleeting. Going forward, I intend to make mine musical, as well.