Just Me and My Violin

I'm on top of a mountain. Wind hover my entire body, never had a chance of escape loomed over its coldness. But then here I am standing still, holding my bow and about to stroke the four-stringed instrument...music fills in...

I’m now staying here in our Carmel Spirituality Center in Brgy. Milagros, Ormoc City. I would say this is the culmination of my intervention year as part of what I have asked in the formation – to be in the place where I can reflect. My previous assignments were from different communities also. You see, I’ve been traveling around the country. And whenever I go, I bring with me my violin. This is not about being a musician who performs to any part of the country. I’m no like Mozart who, as a young prodigy in music, had all the traveling experiences from Salzburg (his birth place) to Austria, Munich, Augsburg, Brussels, down to Italy, Venice and so on and so forth just to promote his talent, eagerly supervised by his father Leopold, parading his son like an ordinary performing arts. No I’m not, I was just a speck compared to him known to be genius in Music. But I like music. Whenever I hear songs of soulful drive, venturing into its musicality and creativeness of such delightful life into it, I can’t help but to pause for awhile and listen to what my heart tells me. Yes, there is something speaking inside of me while listening to music. I don’t know but maybe it’s my soul speaking to myself and It’s the same force the plunges me into music until now. These lead me to love classical music as well, hearing the music of great musicians/composers of all time (Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Vivalde, Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and more). Music has its own stories that the composers creatively conveyed to the audience. It is embedded in the musical sheets and in every note that is being played.

How I wish I am gifted as they were. But for me, it’s enough to be able to communicate with the music. Somehow it helped me to go back to my own stories while hearing the notes being interpreted. I am confronted with my own music in my life. Sometimes my life is played in “Adagio” sometimes in “Andante” if not “Allegro.” Sometimes not perfectly played but what matter is the impact it gives to me whenever my life is on the stage and performing a concerto for the audience – the people I’ve met. Each play is an opportunity for me to improve my musicality and to be mature musician of my own life. Everyday you have to practice with your instrument in order to execute your part in an orchestra. By the time you mastered it, you are not lost in the play, rather, you and your other companion are one in giving life to the music you played. In life, I have to practice how to be a good person and how to live my life that is in accordance to what we, as truly human being, ought to do.

I bought a violin last year, and started learning it since then. I can be myself when I play the violin, I can go with the flow of the notes which leads me to my inner chamber. It’s one way of expressing my self and divulging what I feel inside. Now that I am on my process of looking deeply into myself in this quite place of Ormoc, playing my violin and listening to its music really help me a lot. It is where the music in me is speaking with my self, and my self speaking to the music of my life, a heart to heart talk – just me and my violin.




-melskiens-