Violin Bow Quotes

Because two people in love don't make a hive mind. Neither should they want to be a hive mind, to think the same, to know the same. It's about being separate and still loving each other, being distinct from each other. One is the violin string one is the bow.

He lifted the violin to his shoulder then, and raised the bow. And he played.

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. - Love Song

Zhi yin. Jem had told her once that it meant understanding music, and also a bond that went deeper than friendship. Jem played, and he played the years of Will's life as he had seen them. He played two little boys in the training room, one showing the other how to throw knives, and he played the ritual of parabatai: the fire and the vows and burning runes. He played two young men running through the streets of London in the dark, stopping to lean up against a wall and laugh together. He played the day in the library when he and Will had jested with Tessa about ducks, and he played the train to Yorkshire on which Jem had said that parabatai were meant to love each other as they loved their own souls. He played that love, and he played their love for Tessa, and hers for them, and he played Will saying, In your eyes I have always found grace. He played the too few times he had seen them since he had joined the Brotherhood- the brief meetings at the Institute; the time when Will had been bitten by a Shax demon and nearly died, and Jem had come from the Silent City and sat with him all night, risking discovery and punishment. And he played the birth of their first son, and the protection ceremony that had been carried out on the child in the Silent City. Will would have no other Silent Brother but Jem perform it. And Jem played the way he had covered his scarred face with his hands and turned away when he'd found out the child's name was James. He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he'd set the violin back in its box, Will's eyes were closed, but Tessa's were full of tears. Jem set down his bow, and came toward the bed, drawing back his hood, so she could see his closed eyes and his scarred face. And he had sat down beside them on the bed, and taken Will's hand, the one that Tessa was not holding, and both Will and Tessa heard Jem's voice in their minds. I take your hand, brother, so that you may go in peace. Will had opened the blue eyes that had never lost their color over all the passing years, and looked at Jem and then Tessa, and smiled, and died, with Tessa's head on his shoulder and his hand in Jem's.

Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder.

I drew it over my skin like a violins bow, No one would ever hear the song of my shame.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

Something drew tight inside of her, like a violin string awaiting the touch of a bow. Looking down at him, her heart ached with a song that did not have words or notes or form, but strained nonetheless to be given voice- a sensation that was not unlike suffering, for it seemed too great for her body to contain.

As it ferments, kraut whispers alchemical secrets. In two days, it will smell as agreeable as an old pillow still warm from night’s use. In five days it will smell like a horse run to foam. The odor will then lessen as the vegetable begins its tart transformation. It will be good to eat in two weeks, but at five weeks it will reach the zenith of its power, its taste a violin bow drawn across the tongue. After six weeks it will err slowly toward slime. Like hams and men, it gets better with age only to a point.

But it's the eyes that hold me captive, empty of concentric creek ripples and breezy tree branches playing the sky like my bow plays my violin.

I stared at him, baffled. But at that moment Gideon began to play, and I entirely forgot what I had been going to ask the count. Oh, my god! Maybe it was the punch—but wow! That violin was really sexy! Even the way Gideon raised it and tucked it under his chin! He didn’t have to do more than that to carry me away with him. His long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, and a lock of hair fell over his face as he began passing the bow over the strings. The first notes filling the room almost took my breath away, they made such tender, melting music, and suddenly I was close to tears. Until now, violins had been way down on my list of favorite instruments, and I really liked them only for accompanying certain moments in films. But this was just incredibly wonderful—well, all of it was: the bittersweet melody and boy enticing it out of the instrument. All the people in the room listened with bated breath, and Gideon played on, immersed in the music as if there were no one else there. I didn’t notice that I was crying until the count touched my cheek and caught a tear gently with his finger. Then I jumped in alarm. He was smiling down at me, and I saw a warm glow in his dark brown eyes. “Nothing to be ashamed of,” he said quietly. “If it were otherwise, I’d have been very disappointed.

The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart…The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.

Jules rested the violin and bow on the case and sat down next to Jason. He hesitated for a moment, watching the older man with uncomfortable intensity, then reached for Jason and brushed a single tear from his cheek. For Jason, the touch was electric, and his physical response unexpected. “Bach always touches my soul,” Jules half whispered. His fingers still rested against Jason’s cheek. “He must have known great love, and great pain, to write something so powerful.” Jason realized that his own pain must be showing on his face, because Jules, too, looked sad. "I’ve never been religious,” Jules said, his eyes never leaving Jason’s, “but I played this piece in a tiny church once. It was like God was there with me, speaking through me.” When Jason remained silent, Jules leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. At a loss to explain the intense emotional and sexual response of his own body and equally unable to stop himself, Jason reached for Jules and returned the kiss. The younger man’s lips tasted of wine and musk, and Jason realized that he was hungry for more.

A warm, ragged breath disturbed the hairs on my forehead, and my blood began pricking as I realized where exactly I had retreated: right into Mr. Braddock, our strange connection humming through the hairsbreadth of distance between our bodies, our faces. I froze, forcing myself to stop shoving against him further. Before I understood anything, a rough, large hand brushed my chin, my face tipped upwards, and his mouth caught mine, and suddenly my entire body was on fire. Whatever odd sensation had thrummed between us before was just the stroke of a violin bow to this clash of an orchestra. I felt the world pass between our lips, tasting champagne, hunger, and something indefinably darker, while his hand ignited sparks down my cheek to the nape of my neck. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer, forcing that elusive essence to run deeper than my skin, deeper than my veins, until my very bones vibrated.

Don’t Let That Horse . . .” from A Coney Island of the Mind. Don’t let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall’s mother But he kept right on painting And became famous And kept on painting The Horse With Violin In Mouth And when he finally finished it he jumped up upon the horse and rode away waving the violin And then with a low bow gave it to the first naked nude he ran across And there were no strings attached

Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep. He took up his violin fom the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air - his own no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me.

Then she took up the bow and began to play. The tone was warm and deep, storied with layers of age.

I wanted to press the tip of the violin bow to his throat and run it down to his navel. My God, he was beautiful.

Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer Thought it scarcely worth his while To waste much time on the old violin, But held it up with a smile. “What am I bidden, good folks,” he cried, “Who’ll start the bidding for me?” “A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two? Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?” “Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice; Going for three…” But no, From the room, far back, a grey-haired man Came forward and picked up the bow; Then wiping the dust from the old violin, And tightening the loosened strings, He played a melody pure and sweet, As a caroling angel sings. The music ceased, and the auctioneer, With a voice that was quiet and low, Said: “What am I bid for the old violin?” And he held it up with the bow. “A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two? Two thousand! And who’ll make it three? Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice, And going and gone,” said he. The people cheered, but some of them cried, “We do not quite understand. What changed its worth?” Swift came the reply: “The touch of the Master’s hand.” And many a man with life out of tune, And battered and scarred with sin, Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd Much like the old violin. A “mess of pottage,” a glass of wine, A game — and he travels on. He is “going” once, and “going” twice, He’s “going” and almost “gone.” But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd Never can quite understand The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought By the touch of the Master’s hand.

Look here, Watson; you look regularly done. Lie down there on the sofa, and see if I can put you to sleep.” He took up his violin from the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air,—his own, no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face, and the rise and fall of his bow.

Once she started, she couldn’t stop, the edges of her memories sawing at her as she sat at her lessons, as she did her homework and ran pitifully around the hockey field and ate her tasteless meals in the dining hall. The memories weren’t the overwhelming ones she’d had that had made her sick. These were like a violin bow grinding along the edge of a single string, shrill, waiting for some kind of resolution to make it stop. The only thing that worked was writing.

the breeze would draw a violin bow across the branches of a tree and I would again hear her lullaby. I would listen to the chime of coins being counted, and I would imagine her laughter. Her voice was caught in the shell of my ear, as if it were the ocean.

Cooking is like playing a violin. The bow is a tool used to play, as is the knives and other tools you use to prepare. (a chef's knife is even held in the same manner) Spices are the notes used in the score. The way the food is cooked and prepared is the rhythm and tempo. The ingredients are the violin themselves, ready to be played upon. The finished dish is the music played to its best melody. All of these things must be applied together at the right pace, manner, and time in order to create a flavourful rush of artwork and beauty.

He does not look at the dancers, does not acknowledge her, sitting and staring. He is steeped in a private aural world. He drew out longer notes than her papa ever had; he was more forceful with the bow; she hadn't known the violin contained such wildness. She was reminded of the tarantella, which skipped along its notes and pulled you upward; out of yourself, come and play! But these pieces, these tangos, didn't only lift; they also plunged you downward, deep inside yourself, to the unexamined corners of your heart. Come, they whispered, come and look, see what's here and dance with it, this is music too.

Elnora lifted the violin and began to play. She wore a school dress of green gingham, with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. She seemed a part of the setting all around her. Her head shone like a small dark sun, her face never had seemed so rose-flushed and fair. From the instant she drew the bow, her lips parted and her eyes fastened on something far away in the swamp, and never did she give more of that immpression of feeling for her notes and repeating something audible only to her. Ammon was to near to get the best effect. he arose and stepped back several yards, leaning against a large tree, looking and listening with all his soul. As he changed position he saw that Mrs. Comstock had followed them, and was standing on the trail, where she could not have helped hearing everything Elnora had said. So to Ammon before her and the mother watching on the trail, Elnora played the Song of the Limberlost. It seemed as if the swamp hushed all its other voices and spoke only through her dancing bow. The mother out on the trail had heard it all once before from the girl, many times from her father. To the man it was a revelation. He stood so stunned he forgot Mrs. Comstock. He tried to realize what a great city audience would say to that music, from such a player, with a like background, he could not imagine.

Through him I could play the music I heard in my soul. I was the violin, he was the bow.

It’s WA today, Minna,” called Orson from across the room, Orson’s name for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Orson played second violin with a sloppy serenity, rolling his eyes and sticking out his tongue, his bowing long and sweeping and beautiful even when out of tune. “If you must make a mistake,” he had quoted, “make it a big one.” Was it Heifetz who had said it? Perlman? Zukerman maybe?

Lucifer was sprawled out on a couch, a spot he had not moved from in decades.  The white leather beneath him was old and cracked.  The window to the left of him had once looked out over mountains, but now only revealed the ivy that crawled up the glass.  A violin and its bow lay on the white carpet next to the couch.    Lucifer rested his hand on the violin as if to snatch it up in seconds

He is about to hand the earphone to Jutta when—clear and unblemished, about halfway down the coil—he hears the quick, drastic strikes of a bow dashing across the strings of a violin. He tries to hold the pin perfectly still. A second violin joins the first. Jutta drags herself closer; she watches her brother with outsize eyes. A piano chases the violins. Then woodwinds. The strings sprint, woodwinds fluttering behind. More instruments join in. Flutes? Harps? The song races, seems to loop back over itself.

The friends, the relatives, the adoring public, the mint of money—they are all David's now. But once each year, man grown though he is, he picks up his violin and journeys to a little village far up among the hills. There in a quiet kitchen he plays to an old man and an old woman; and always to himself he says that he is practicing against the time when, his violin at his chin and the bow drawn across the strings, he shall go to meet his father in the far-away land, and tell him of the beautiful world he has left.

He picked up a violin which lay on the table and drew the bow once or twice across the strings. Tuppence ground her teeth, and even the explorer blenched. The performer laid the instrument down again. ‘A few chords from Mosgovskensky,’ he murmured. As the visitor left the office, Tuppence grabbed the violin, and putting it in the cupboard turned the key in the lock. ‘If you must be Sherlock Holmes,’ she observed, ‘I’ll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled cocaine, but for God’s sake leave that violin alone.

Anya's final sweep of the bow was as if she had delivered the coup de grâce in a sword duel. The last note reverberated around the empty theatre until only the white noise from the speakers remained, lapping back in like a gentle wave. It was probably the most beautiful rendition I had heard her perform, but there was no applause; there was only silence. I flicked my eyes across to Malcolm, the theatre director, but his gaze was transfixed on a particular seat. Even Anya, rigid and breathless with the violin at her side, was staring at that same seat.

And when the man had touched his bow to the string, touched and then drawn the bow across, holding that long first note, Ogden had understood that every life had at its center a beginning that was not birth, a moment when the catch on the lock in one's life opens, and out it comes, starting forward.

Talking to him was like playing upon an exquisite violin. He answered to every touch and thrill of the bow.... There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one’s soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one’s own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth;

It throbbed and pulsed, channeled by elemental forces of fear, love, hope, and sadness. The bow stabbed and flitted across the strings in a violent whorl of creation; its hairs tore and split until it seemed the last strands would sever in a scrape of dissonance. Those who saw the last fragile remnants held their breath against the breaking. The music rippled across the ship like a spirit, like a thing alive and eldritch and pregnant with mystery. The song held. More than held, it deepened. It groaned. It resounded in the hollows of those who heard. Then it softened into tones long, slow, and patient and reminded men of the faintest stars trembling dimly in defiance of a ravening dark. At the last, when the golden hairs of the bow had given all the sound they knew, the music fled in a whisper. Fin was both emptied and filled, and the song sighed away on the wind.

He’s licking the inside of my breasts like they’re luscious, sweet fruits. I run my fingers in his hair, bow into him, beg, “Please.” He hums against my nipple. I wait for him to take it into his mouth, tense as a violin string, and when he doesn’t, when he pulls back to stare at me, I nearly groan. I do groan. A soft, miserable whine. “If you were any other woman . . .” His palms stroke my knees, spreading my legs apart. “If you were anyone but you, I would take you to bed. And I’d fuck you everywhere you let me.” His fingers are like electricity, climbing up my inner thighs, lighting up nerve endings. “I would go down on you, maybe while you’re going down on me. And because your tits look like something I’ll be dreaming about for decades, I’d ask for permission to come on them. Paint a picture.” He reaches the elastic of my panties. I inhale, sharp. “I’d clean you up and feed you before taking you home, if you wanted me to.” His thumb pushes the wet cotton

The man raised the violin under his chin, placed the bow across the strings, and closed his eyes. For a moment his lips moved, silently, as if in prayer. Then, with sure, steady movements, he began to play. The song was like nothing Abbey had heard anywhere else. The notes were clear, sweet and perfect, with a purity of tone that not one violin in ten thousand could produce. But the song was more than that. The song was pain, and loss, and sorrow, an anthem of unrelenting grief for which no words could be sufficient. In its strains Abbey heard the cry of the mother clutching her lifeless child; of the young woman whose husband never returned from war; of the father watching his son die of cancer; of the old man weeping at his wife's grave. It was the wordless cry of every man, woman and child who had ever shaken a fist at the uncaring universe, every stricken heart that had demanded an answer to the question, “Why?”, and was left unsatisfied. When the song finally, mercifully ended, not a dry eye remained in the darkened hall. The shades had moved in among the mortals, unseen by all but Abbey herself, and crowded close to the stage, heedless of all but the thing that called to them. Many of the mortals in the audience were sobbing openly. Those newcomers who still retained any sense of their surroundings were staring up at the man, their eyes wide with awe and a silent plea for understanding. The man gave it to them. “I am not the master of this instrument,” he said. “The lady is her own mistress. I am only the channel through which she speaks. What you have heard tonight — what you will continue to hear — is not a performance, but a séance. In my … unworthy hands … she will tell you her story: Sorrow, pain, loss, truth, and beauty. This is not the work of one man; it is the story of all men, of all people everywhere, throughout her long history. Which means, of course, that it is also your story, and mine.” He held up the violin once more. In the uncertain play of light and shadow, faces seemed to appear and vanish in the blood-red surface of the wood. “Her name is Threnody,” he said. “And she has come to make you free.

Everywhere something could be detected that seemed to be on the point of betraying some secret, something elusively subtle oh, how subtle!...'No,' Chichikov said to himself, 'women are a subject such as...' Here he dismissed it with the wave of a hand: 'What's the use of talking!' Just try and describe or put into words everything that is flitting over their faces, all the subtle twists of meaning, all the hints- and you simply won't be able to put into words. Their eyes alone are such a vast realm that if a man ventured to enter it he'd be as good as done for! You won't drag him out of there by hook or by crook. Just try describing, for instance, their glitter alone: moist, velvety, sugary. Goodness only knows what else you may not find there. Harsh and soft, and quite languishing, or as some say, voluptuous or not voluptuous but a hundred times worse than voluptuous- and it clutches your heart and plays upon your souls, as though a violin bow. No, one simply can't find the right words: the 'ever so refined' half of the human species, and that's all there is to it.

Surely an instrument is neither male nor female—they’re just things that make sound—strings and bows, brass and wood, mallets and cymbals and drumskins and little metal triangles. And yet all you have to do is look around at these musicians to see the way that even sound is gendered. In the middle of the orchestra is the brass section—tubas, trombones, trumpets, French horn, every last one of them played by boys. It’s not all that different in the woodwinds—where the boys play bassoons and clarinets, but all the flutes are played by girls. The strings are even more ridiculous—the deeper the instrument, the more likely it is to be played by a boy. So all the basses? Boys. Most of the cellos? Boys. The violas split half and half. All but one of the violins? Girls. Then there’s the harp, which I guess federal law requires be played by a girl. And the percussion and kettle drums, which are usually played by boys. How weird is this? Most of us decided to play our instruments in third grade, a bunch of little kids who made our choices without even thinking about them. But even at eight years old, we were already running the gender maze that the world had set for us, without even realizing it.

As I became older, I was given many masks to wear. I could be a laborer laying railroad tracks across the continent, with long hair in a queue to be pulled by pranksters; a gardener trimming the shrubs while secretly planting a bomb; a saboteur before the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, signaling the Imperial Fleet; a kamikaze pilot donning his headband somberly, screaming 'Banzai' on my way to my death; a peasant with a broad-brimmed straw hat in a rice paddy on the other side of the world, stooped over to toil in the water; an obedient servant in the parlor, a houseboy too dignified for my own good; a washerman in the basement laundry, removing stains using an ancient secret; a tyrant intent on imposing my despotism on the democratic world, opposed by the free and the brave; a party cadre alongside many others, all of us clad in coordinated Mao jackets; a sniper camouflaged in the trees of the jungle, training my gunsights on G.I. Joe; a child running with a body burning from napalm, captured in an unforgettable photo; an enemy shot in the head or slaughtered by the villageful; one of the grooms in a mass wedding of couples, having met my mate the day before through our cult leader; an orphan in the last airlift out of a collapsed capital, ready to be adopted into the good life; a black belt martial artist breaking cinderblocks with his head, in an advertisement for Ginsu brand knives with the slogan 'but wait--there's more' as the commercial segued to show another free gift; a chef serving up dog stew, a trick on the unsuspecting diner; a bad driver swerving into the next lane, exactly as could be expected; a horny exchange student here for a year, eager to date the blonde cheerleader; a tourist visiting, clicking away with his camera, posing my family in front of the monuments and statues; a ping pong champion, wearing white tube socks pulled up too high and batting the ball with a wicked spin; a violin prodigy impressing the audience at Carnegie Hall, before taking a polite bow; a teen computer scientist, ready to make millions on an initial public offering before the company stock crashes; a gangster in sunglasses and a tight suit, embroiled in a turf war with the Sicilian mob; an urban greengrocer selling lunch by the pound, rudely returning change over the counter to the black patrons; a businessman with a briefcase of cash bribing a congressman, a corrupting influence on the electoral process; a salaryman on my way to work, crammed into the commuter train and loyal to the company; a shady doctor, trained in a foreign tradition with anatomical diagrams of the human body mapping the flow of life energy through a multitude of colored points; a calculus graduate student with thick glasses and a bad haircut, serving as a teaching assistant with an incomprehensible accent, scribbling on the chalkboard; an automobile enthusiast who customizes an imported car with a supercharged engine and Japanese decals in the rear window, cruising the boulevard looking for a drag race; a illegal alien crowded into the cargo hold of a smuggler's ship, defying death only to crowd into a New York City tenement and work as a slave in a sweatshop. My mother and my girl cousins were Madame Butterfly from the mail order bride catalog, dying in their service to the masculinity of the West, and the dragon lady in a kimono, taking vengeance for her sisters. They became the television newscaster, look-alikes with their flawlessly permed hair. Through these indelible images, I grew up. But when I looked in the mirror, I could not believe my own reflection because it was not like what I saw around me. Over the years, the world opened up. It has become a dizzying kaleidoscope of cultural fragments, arranged and rearranged without plan or order.

Their reflections merged together, rippling on the dark surface of the mirror that recorded only the intermittent pale blurs of their faces and the gracious, rocking-chair, three-hour rhythm of their bodies, spinning between the waltzing walls. Laughing, breathless, they whirled to the invisible rhetoric of a hundred violins. The patches of candlelight illuminated only their feet for odd moments, and then they were back, dancing in darkness again. They neared the extravagant climax of the dance. ‘Da – dee dee da – dee da! dum, dum!’ But when the time came for parting and bowing and curtseying to one another, Honeybuzzard instead convulsively crushed his partner in a fierce embrace, pressing his sweating face deeply into the other’s shoulder, straining bruising fingers into neck and back, wet mouth fastened on his throat, clinging as if he would never let go until the round world toppled into the sun and the last bell-tower rang midnight and everything was extinguished.

Jolly Marchers by Maisie Aletha Smikle Dam Dam Didley Doe Dee Daw Didley Doe Dee Dam Doe Fa So La Ti Doe Animals in a row Prancing as they go Jiggling and Wiggling Tails and head bobbing Mice on drums Elephants on flute Zebras blare the trumpets Squirrels blow trombones Skunks get funky on clarinets Bees on violins Hogs on guitar Parrots and crickets sing Aha Aha Vultures cheer Mosquitoes twirl Wings clapping and flapping Heads go up and down bobbing Marching and skanking Rocking and bobbing Wiggling and singing Dee Daw Didley Doe This is not a circus There are no clowns There is not a palace There are no crowns On and on they go Monkeys in tow Tigers in bow Onlookers stare and glow Donkey takes the podium As conductor of the band Waving his marching wand The band comes to a stand Mule takes a stool And sits in the cool They have reached the bend Where the march ends The ants were nesting So they missed the fest Some got on tambourines And insist they must join in The ants jiggle and wiggle Some play the fiddle Dancing and singing Didley Dam Didley Doe

Closing her eyes, she fit the violin under her chin, and set the bow to the strings. Faith had never been as blind as this. The first thing that came to mind was the sound of her fingers breaking. Her life, as she knew it, dying. The shock and the pain of it, and the utter devastation. They’ve killed me, she thought. So she played it. Next came the memory of warm, strong hands reaching for hers in the darkness. The unknown clasping her fingers, healing her, lending her strength and reassurance. It was the only thing in the world when she had nothing. It had been her lifeline. And she played it. Then came trust, the tentative unfurling, when she believed against all evidence that the person who came to her in the darkness would help her in any way he could. The impossibly intense adventure of his arm, sliding around her shoulders. The miracle of warmth when she had known nothing but coldness. That first kiss, oh, the surprise of it! The agonizing uncertainty… was it all right to allow this? How could it feel so incredibly good? Could she possibly kiss him again? Oh, when could she kiss him again? The burning that took hold, the incandescent light that shone despite all the shadows stacked around them. The unbearable, delicious hunger that was the sweetest pain… that she would give anything, anything, if only she could feel it again… Always before, when she had played, she’d had the awareness of the violin and the bow as instruments in her craft. Her music had been self-conscious, aware. Now, as she played, she went somewhere she had never gone before. She lost awareness of the violin altogether. She became the music. She was the story, the vibration. She became the story of love, the notes written in kisses and caresses on her skin. She felt the symphony, the swelling highs in the lifts, and the terrible lows in the falls, and hope was the cruelest note of all, the devastation that came afterward, utterly intolerable. She poured it all out, all the emotion, the experience, the exquisite delight along with the terror. There was no hiding any of it from a god anyway. The only other being she had been so naked with was Morgan, and he was gone. Gone, while the love she felt for him had become the very breath of life to her. Give him back to me, she begged with her music. Give him back. When the last note speared through the air, she had nothing left to give.

And then she caught the song. She fell upon it and music poured from the fiddle’s hollow, bright and liquid like fire out of the heart of the earth. Pierre-Jean drew back and stood mesmerized. The room around Fin stirred as every ear bent to the ring of heartsong. It rushed through Fin and spread to the outermost and tiniest capillary reaches of her body. Her flesh sang. The hairs of her arms and neck roused and stood. She sped the bow across the strings. Her fingers danced on the fingerboard quick as fat raindrops. Every man in the room that night would later swear that there was a wind within it. They would tell their children and lovers that a hurricane had filled the room, toppled chairs, driven papers and sheets before it and blew not merely around them but through them, taking fears, grudges, malice, and contempt with it, sending them spiraling out into the night where they vanished among the stars like embers rising from a bonfire. And though the spirited cry of the fiddle’s song blew through others and around the room and everything in it, Fin sat at the heart of it. It poured into her. It found room in the closets and hollow places of her soul to settle and root. It planted seeds: courage, resolve, steadfastness. Fin gulped it in, seized it, held it fast. She needed it, had thirsted for it all her days. She saw the road ahead of her, and though she didn’t understand it or comprehend her part in it, she knew that she needed the ancient and reckless power of a holy song to endure it. She didn’t let the music loose. It buckled and swept and still she clung to it, defined it in notes and rhythm, channeled it like a river bound between mountain steeps. And a thing happened then so precious and strange that Fin would ever after remember it only in the formless manner of dreams. The song turned and spoke her name—her true name, intoned in a language of mysteries. Not her earthly name, but a secret word, defining her alone among all created things. The writhing song spoke it, and for the first time, she knew herself. She knew what it was to be separated out, held apart from every other breathing creature, and known. Though she’d never heard it before and wouldn’t recall it after, every stitch of her soul shook in the passage of the word, shuddered in the wake of it, and mourned as the sound sped away. In an instant, it was over. The song ended with the dissonant pluck of a broken string.

This guy Lobo, whose real and true name was Wolfgang Fink, played better than good flamenco guitar in a place called Mamma Mia in Puerto Vallarta. Had a partner name of Willie Royal, tall gangly guy who was balding a little early and wore glasses and played hot gypsy-jazz violin. They'd worked out a repertoire of their own tunes, "Improvisation #18" and "Gypsy Rock" as examples, played 'em high and hard, rolled through "Amsterdam" and "The Sultan's Dream" with enough power to set you two times free or even beyond that when the day had been tolerable and the night held promise. Lobo, sun worn and hard lined in the face looking over at Willie Royal bobbing and weaving and twisting his face into a mean imitation of a death mask when he really got into it, right wrist looking almost limp but moving his bow at warp speed across the strings, punctuated here and there by Lobo's stabbing ruscados and finger tapping on the guitar top. Good music, wonderful music, tight and wild all at the same time. On those nights when the sweat ran down your back and veneered your face and the gringitas looked good enough to swallow whole - knowing too they looked just that way and them watching the crowd to see who might be man enough to try it - people would be riding on the music, drinking and clapping in flamenco time, dancing around the dinner tables.

THE FAIRY REEL If I were young as once I was, and dreams and death more distant then, I wouldn’t split my soul in two, and keep half in the world of men, So half of me would stay at home, and strive for Fäerie in vain, While all the while my soul would stroll up narrow path, down crooked lane, And there would meet a fairy lass and smile and bow with kisses three, She’d pluck wild eagles from the air and nail me to a lightning tree And if my heart would run from her or flee from her, be gone from her, She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then she’d take it on with her Until one day she’d tire of it, all bored with it and done with it She’d leave it by a burning brook, and off brown boys would run with it. They’d take it and have fun with it and stretch it long and cruel and thin, They’d slice it into four and then they’d string with it a violin. And every day and every night they’d play upon my heart a song So plaintive and so wild and strange that all who heard it danced along And sang and whirled and sank and trod and skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they’d crumble into wheels of gold…. But I am young no longer now; for sixty years my heart’s been gone To play its dreadful music there, beyond the valley of the sun. I watch with envious eyes and mind, the single-souled, who dare not feel The wind that blows beyond the moon, who do not hear the Fairy Reel. If you don’t hear the Fairy Reel, they will not pause to steal your breath. When I was young I was a fool. So wrap me up in dreams and death.

The Blessed I am in the darkness and alone. In front of me stands the door. When I open it, I am bathed in light. There are a father, a mother and sister, A dog, which, dumb, still barks in friendliness. How can I lie, and how can I say That I, hidden there in darkness, have not come to harm them? I drag myself over the threshold. Snow blossoms in my eyes. I saw him bowing to me courteously; How much that hurt me. How could my heart find peace, When round it raced the voice of the old man? I live in coldness. I dried my tears and went To where the man was eating with his family. It was so calm and loving a reception. I felt the violins sounding inside me At first, so sweetly, so gently. They will never sound again, when I have finished. Fear drenched my hands. Beneath me I could almost taste my womb. A sneer seemed to say: 'Have you no shame? What have you done with the wedding-ring on your finger? Terrible thief, where did you hide your courage? Does the nakedness of my right hand mean so little to me?' I felt so poor and naked. I wriggled in my chair And trembled to think what I must do. Pity clawed at my heart and shook my body Like a tree in a winter field blown by the wind Shedding leaves. I told myself it was time to go, Scolding my wan, faded self for my little worries. Pleased with myself again, I steeled myself for the torture. The joy of it! Oh, how I want to be Just like an animal and be happy again! I sharpen my claws with a knife. It is still night, and that thing called shame, I may not let it show itself. I know the train that tears through the woods. I go out to the unfeeling rails. Weary, I am glad to go to bed, Running across two flat sticks of iron.

Sophie thinks you were offering her a less than honorable proposition before we came to collect her, and modified your proposal only when her station became apparent.” Windham took a casual sip of his drink while Vim’s brain fumbled for a coherent thought. “She thinks what ?” “She thinks you offered to set her up as your mistress and changed your tune, so to speak, when it became apparent you were both titled. I know she is in error in this regard.” Vim cocked his head. “How could you know such a thing?” “Because if you propositioned my sister with such an arrangement, it’s your skull I’d be using that splitting ax on.” “If Sophie thinks this, then she is mistaken.” Windham remained silent, reinforcing Vim’s sense the man was shrewd in the extreme. “You will please disabuse her of her error.” Windham shook his head slowly, right to left, left to right. “It isn’t my error, and it isn’t Sophie’s error. She’s nothing if not bright, and you were probably nothing if not cautious in offering your suit. The situation calls for derring-do, old sport. Bended knee, flowers, tremolo in the strings, that sort of thing.” He gestured as if stroking a bow over a violin, a lyrical, dramatic rendering that ought to have looked foolish but was instead casually beautiful. “Tremolo in the strings?” “To match the trembling of her heart. A fellow learns to listen for these things.” Windham set his mug down with a thump and speared Vim with a look. “I’m off to do battle with the treble register. Wish me luck, because failure on my part will be apparent every Sunday between now and Judgment Day.” “Windham, for God’s sake, you don’t just accuse a man of such a miscalculation and then saunter off to twist piano wires.” Much less make references to failure being eternally apparent. “Rather thought I was twisting your heart strings. Must be losing my touch.” Vim

On the Overture of the Rossini opera "Il SIgnor Bruschino" - The sound of the second violins striking the backs of their bows against the metal candle holders shortly after the start of the overture was judged 'incomprehensible' by the Giornale. Rossini feared as much. 'Dio ti salvi l'anima' (God save your soul), he wrote on the manuscript at the end of the overture).

Ah, among the unhappiest blunders a man makes is this, that he childishly misjudges the value of the gifts that nature bestows on him most easily, and, contrariwise, considers most precious the endowments that come hardest. The precious stone buried in the earth's entrails, the pearl hidden in the ocean depths—these are what people regard as the greatest treasures; but they would look down on them if nature strewed them underfoot like pebbles and seashells. We are casual about our own excellences; we try to deceive ourselves about out weaknesses so long that we end up taking them for eminent virtues. Once, after a concert by Paganini, when I confronted the master with passionate praises for his violin playing, he interrupted me with these words: 'But today how did you like my bows, my genuflections?

Of course, certain external circumstances are impossible to predict. ... For instance: Will our country last? Its predecessor, with all its might, was more short-lived than your average violin, for which seventy years is nothing, a piffling age: seventy-year-old violins look virtually brand-new; they have no cracks to speak of; sometimes luthiers have to imitate wear and tear. As it currently stands, it doesn't appear that this country, successor to the one in which Leva and Yasha and Katya and Dodik grew up, has a long life in store: it'll fall apart, disintegrate, too many cracks to count. But then again, that may not come to pass. We shouldn't look to contrive an outcome—let that story run its own course. ... However, there is one thing of which we are certain. Bows will still be wound in silver wire or whalebone; ebony frogs will still be inlaid with mother-of-pearl eyes; and childen's violins—one-quarter size, one-eighth size—will still bear delicate trails of salt, the salt of tears from children, who cry as they play, not stopping, not ending their music.

But in her head, she believed what Einstein had suggested. The enigma of The Universe itself was answered in mathematics. Mushing was all about timing. It was about the rhythm of dog and man - synchronicity of movement, elegance. And sometimes, the movement of her bow across the strings of her violin reminded her of the swish and glide of the runners on a sled ride in the snow.

When they reached the top level, Susan turned to the left. The corridor had raised wallpaper in a classic floral design and nothing else. No small tables, no chairs, no pictures in frames, no Oriental runners. They passed by maybe a dozen rooms, only two with doors open. Myron noticed that the doors were extra wide and he remembered his visit to Babies and Children’s Hospital. Extra wide doors there too. For wheelchairs and stretchers and the like. When they reached the end of the corridor, Susan stopped, took a deep breath, looked back at Myron. “Are you ready?” He nodded. She opened the door and stepped inside. Myron followed. A four-poster antique bed, like something you’d see on a tour of Jefferson’s Monticello, overwhelmed the room. The walls were warm green with woodwork trim. There was a small crystal chandelier, a burgundy Victorian couch, a Persian rug with deep scarlets. A Mozart violin concerto was playing a bit too loudly on the stereo. A woman sat in the corner reading a book. She too started upright when she saw who it was. “It’s okay,” Susan Lex said. “Would you mind leaving us for a few moments?” “Yes, ma’am,” the woman said. “If you need anything—” “I’ll ring, thank you.” The woman did a semi-curtsy/semi-bow and hurried out. Myron looked at the man in the bed. The resemblance to the computer rendering was uncanny, almost perfect. Even, strangely enough, the dead eyes. Myron moved closer. Dennis Lex followed him with the dead eyes, unfocused, empty, like windows over a vacant lot.

The music washed over Shane as he stepped into a dimly lit space.  Thick rugs covered the floor, and stacks of written music were piled around the room haphazardly.  The room, like the door, was tall and narrow.  It was also long and barren of windows.  On the wood-paneled walls, dozens of violins and their bows rested on individual shelves.

How well it works is up to you and how you choose to wield it. I make one promise. The more you use it, the better at using it you will become. No one picks up a sword for the first time and knows how to brandish it like an expert. No one takes up the violin and becomes a master the moment they place bow upon strings. It takes time. Effort. Dedication. Discipline.

The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek's soul has become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.

Love Song How shall I hold my soul to not intrude upon yours? How shall I lift it beyond you to other things? I would gladly lodge it with lost objects in the dark, in some far still place that does not tremble when you tremble. But all that touches us, you and me, plays us together, like the bow of a violin that from two strings draws forth one voice. On what instrument are we strung? What musician is playing us? Oh sweet song.

On the cracked floor beside her lay an open violin case. The ebony violin she had played for Death rested inside, along with the bow. The golden strings gleamed in the torchlight. Of all the instruments that were famous works of art, this one was the most exquisite she had ever seen. And of all the instruments in the world, there would never be a more expensive one she could acquire. She had paid for it with an endless lifetime of service. Carefully, as she closed the lid and latched it, she thought, I was broken, and broken again, until I became someone else.

In the vocabulary of neuroscience, we map brains to discover we have “mutable maps” (Merzenich, 2001, p. 418). For example, with the decision to play a violin well, and resolute practice, string musicians alter the structural configuration of their brains to facilitate fingering the strings with one arm and drawing the bow with the other (Elbert et al., 1995).

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; I would my true love did so chance To see the legend of my play, To call my true love to my dance; Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love, This have I done for my true love.

She stood there. Breathing. Then, head still bowed, she raised her violin to its home beneath her chin. And with every vibrant note she'd ever explored, with all the sweet strength she'd ever conjured, and with every strain of loving Jess had planted within her, Addie played

I caught a glimpse of my mother staring out the den window. She held her violin loosely under her chin, and the bow dangled from her fingertips. Her jaw was slack, her eyes locked on something in the trees beyond me. I knew that haunted expression. I froze.

But that afternoon there was an orchestra playing. Music filling the brownstone. Black fingers pulling violin bows and strumming cellos, dark lips around horns, a small brown girl with pale pink nails on flute. Malcolm’s younger brother, his dark skin glistening, blowing somberly into a harmonica. A broad‐shouldered woman on harp. From my place on the stairs, I could see through the windows curious white people stopping in front of the building to listen.

Mountain climbing—in those days, all you had to do in Hollywood was go outside to go mountain climbing—was Lola’s idea of where to take boyfriends and get pregnant and by the time she was nineteen she’d had three gold medals for violin state champion and four abortions, her life having finally, I suppose, proven that you can’t go around being an L.A. woman and expect society not to notice when your bowing begins to sound a little off—not screechy, naturally but, well, she simply wasn’t gold medal material finally, and they gave her a silver one, second prize.

I loved to take my violin with me on my summer rambles, so that, whenever I felt inspired, I could express it in music. During the summers in Sääksmäki I selected a platform, for preference consisting of a stone in Kalalahti with an enchanting view across Vanajavesi. There I gave the birds endless concerts. The neighbourhood of Lovisa. inspired me quite as much. When sailing I often stood in the bows with my violin and improvised to the sea.” Nature played on a rich register in the soul of the youth.

Vice, coming from above, flowed along the gutters, spread itself out in the sheets of ornamental water, reascended in the fountains of the public gardens to fall again on to the roofs in a fine penetrating rain. And at night time, when one passed over the bridges, it seemed as if the Seine drew along with it, amid the sleeping metropolis, all the refuse of the city—crumbs fallen from tables, bows of lace left on divans, false hair forgotten in cabs, bank notes that had slipped out of bodices, everything that the brutality of desire, and the immediate satisfaction of instinct fling into the street broken and soiled. Then amid the feverish sleep of Paris, and better still amid its breathless hankering in the broad daylight, one realised the unsettling of the brain, the golden and voluptuous nightmare of a city, madly enamoured of its gold and its flesh. The violins sounded till midnight: then the windows became dark and shadows descended over the city. It was like a colossal alcove in which the last candle had been blown out, the last virtue extinguished.

Suddenly there was a fearful crash, sending everybody sprawling among the palms and violins. The Arizona had smashed head on into a giant iceberg, shattering 30 feet of her bow. But the forward bulkhead held; there were no casualties; and two days later she limped into St. John’s. In a curious twist of logic, the accident was hailed as an example of the safety of ships, rather than the dangers of ice.

It was the Italians who, late in the sixteenth century, had created the opera, with its preoccupation with solo singing and the surges and droops natural to it. Indeed, opera was practically an Italian proprietary recipe, exported as such over the rest of Europe. The Italians were also interested in making instruments “sing.” The bowed string-instruments were the most likely subjects for that endeavor, and we see that same seventeenth century in Italy witnessing a matchless development in the making of violins of all sizes. Let us recall that Cristofori’s early pianofortes coincided with Stradivari’s “golden period.” It was a near-lying idea, then, for an Italian to wish to build a capacity for “expression” even into a keyboard instrument.

With the violin nestled below my chin, I feel more at home than I ever have in any house. With my fingers on the soundboard and my right hand holding the bow, I close my eyes briefly and breathe. It's like a part of my body has been missing, and now, at last, it's reattached.

In Singin’ in the Rain, Lina Lamont provides both an effective “beard” for Don and Cosmo and a foil, representing both the reason for Don’s “unattached” state and the basis for their mutual contempt for women. Yet the signs are all there to be read for those interested in reading them: Cosmo and Don performing as a burlesque team, in which they sit on each other’s laps and play each other’s violins; Cosmo’s comment to Lina after the premiere of The Royal Rascal, “Yeah, Lina, you looked pretty good for a girl”;30 and their bullying, in “Moses Supposes,” of the fogyish diction coach, figuratively drawn out of his closet only to be ridiculed as an asexual “pansy” who can’t sing and dance (thus both confirming and denying homosexuality at the same time).31 On a broader scale, Kelly’s career as a dancer, offering a more masculinized style of athletic dance (in opposition especially to the stylized grace of Fred Astaire), represented a similar balancing act between, in this case, the feminized occupation of balletic dance and a strong claim of heterosexual masculinity. Significantly, the process of exclusion they use with the diction coach is precisely what Cosmo proposes they apply to Lina in converting The Dueling Cavalier into a musical: “It’s easy to work the numbers. All you have to do is dance around Lina and teach her how to take a bow.” But they also apply the strategy to Kathy, who is only just learning to “dance” in this sense (conveniently so, since Debbie Reynolds had had but little dance training, as noted).32 Early on, we see her dance competently in “All I Do Is Dream of You,” but she then seems extremely tentative in “You Were Meant for Me,” immobile for much of the number, not joining in the singing, and dancing only as Don draws her in (which is, of course, consistent with her character’s development at this point). With “Good Mornin’,” though, she seems to “arrive” as part of the Don-Cosmo team, even though for part of the number she serves as a kind of mannequin—much like the voice teacher in “Moses Supposes,” except that she sings the song proper while Don and Cosmo “improvise” tongue-twisting elaborations between the lines. As the number evolves, their emerging positions within the group become clear. Thus, during their solo clownish dance bits, using their raincoats as props, Kathy and Don present themselves as fetishized love objects, Kathy as an “Island girl” and Don as a matador, while Cosmo dances with a “dummy,” recalling his earlier solo turn in “Make ’em Laugh.

He was trying to sleep. Could one fall asleep here? Wasn’t it dangerous to lower one’s guard, even for a moment, when death could strike at any time? Those were my thoughts when I heard the sound of a violin. A violin in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living? Who was this madman who played the violin here, at the edge of his own grave? Or was it a hallucination? It had to be Juliek. He was playing a fragment of a Beethoven concerto. Never before had I heard such a beautiful sound. In such silence. How had he succeeded in disengaging himself? To slip out from under my body without my feeling it? The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again. I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men. I don’t know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

I lifted the hem of my shorts and set the blade against the skin of my outer thigh, and, though my pulse roared in my temples, though my insides were coiled up in a tight knot of desperation, my hand was steadier than if I’d been drawing my bow across my violin. I pressed and pulled and breathed. The sting only lasted a second, and then there was something else - not relief or distraction or euphoria as I’d expected, but calm, spreading through my veins like a drug, dulling not just the pain of the cut, but all my other hurts, too

I'm not sure what I imagined, but I thought the lapis sash of a mallard's wing meant joy was everyone's destiny. that it was tucked in if only you knew how to look, how to route salt to the side of your tongue, bitter to the back. I preened in the gloss of black ice. Our vows lassoed the night sky--tried to-- each word a flint-dipped sparkler, a nest of lightning or a thrashing fuse. Wasn't that love? Not the way violins are made, maple soaked, warped, planted till sound bloats wood's ancient fissures. Not like the bow slow-combed, pale horsehair secured, capped in wax. when you begin to hate a man, his stunt fingers swell with fat. His red face sweats strawberry rot. Like a stuck pig, the door, if locked, brays and grunts at his boot-strike, shoulder-strike. The town is small, but it's his. You dial, wanting someone to marvel with you, to witness that cheap bolt as it holds. To fix the cornered nuthatch three-quarters dead, still resisting in the cat's mouth, still dreaming of flight.

The audience, too, aware of his propensity, were quick to perceive the least deviation from the text; and if he wandered for a moment, which might also be detected by the eye as well as the ear, in some strange contortion of visage, and some ominous flourish of his bow, a gentle and admonitory murmur recalled the musician from his Elysium or his Tartarus to the sober regions of his desk. Then he would start as if from a dream, cast a hurried, frightened, apologetic glance around, and, with a crestfallen, humbled air, draw his rebellious instrument back to the beaten track of the glib monotony. But at home he would make himself amends for this reluctant drudgery. And there, grasping the unhappy violin with ferocious fingers, he would pour forth, often till the morning rose, strange, wild measures that would startle the early fisherman on the shore below with a superstitious awe, and make him cross himself as if mermaid or sprite had wailed no earthly music in his ear.

Light shone through a large crack in the wall of the maze ahead of us. A slim, slender silhouette cast a shadow against the passage floors. Der Erlkönig. I did not marvel then that I knew the shape of his body as well as my own reflection. I watched the Goblin King's shadow play his violin, his right arm moving in a smooth, practiced bowing motion. Käthe tried to pull me away, but I did not go with her. I moved closer to the light, and pressed my face to the crack. I had to look, I had to see. I had to watch him play. The Goblin King's back was turned to me. He wore no fancy coat, no embroidered dressing gown. He was simply dressed in trousers and a fine cambric shirt, so fine I could see the play of muscles in his back. He played with precision and with considerable skill. The Goblin King was not Josef; he did not have my brother's clarity of emotion or my brother's transcendence. But the Goblin King had his own voice, full of passion, longing, and reverence, and it was unexpectedly... vibrant. Alive. I could hear the slight fumblings, the stutters and starts in tempo, the accidental jarring note that marked his playing as human, oh so human. This was a man- a young man?- playing a song he liked on the violin. Playing it until it sounded perfect to his imperfect ears. I had stumbled upon something private, something intimate. My cheeks reddened. "Liesl." My sister's voice sliced through the sound of the Goblin King's playing like a guillotine, stopping the music mid-phrase. He glanced over his shoulder, and our eyes met. His mismatched gaze was unguarded, and I felt both ashamed and emboldened. I had seen him unclothed in his bedchamber, but he was even more naked now. Propriety told me I should look away, but I could not, arrested by the sight of his soul bared to me. We stared at each other through the crack in the wall, unable to move. The air between us changed, like a world before a storm: hushed, quiet, waiting, expectant.

The term “rosin” originated from the product used to lubricate violin bows.

The violin means everything to me, but for much of my life, it was all I had. The only comfort I was offered. The only solace. Does the past bind me? Did I learn only to feel through the bow and the strings? Are love and domesticity something forever out of my reach?

When I first held a violin, when I touched a bow to the strings, it felt like speaking for the first time. Like I’d lived in silence and finally found words.

Before the nineteenth century, the violin bow was shaped like a hunting bow.