Today, I decided to take up the cello. I’ve been longing to play, even though I can only play one song: Ode to Joy, but really, is there any other song I would need to know?
I have a relationship with the cello that goes beyond playing music.
The cello calls to me whenever I want to transform my life. I don’t know why: no one in my family or friends plays the instrument, but whenever I hear a cello, it enters my soul like warm chocolate piped into a croissant.
The strings simultaneously make me want to dance, swoon, and weep. If I’m in a shop and a song comes on with a cello, I stop and place a hand over my aching heart, aching with a deep resonant beauty impossible to put into words.
In 1999, I had spent more than 10 years making my living as a performer around the world: professional belly dancer, burlesque dancer, circus acrobat and contortionist-illusionist. I loved my life telling stories through dance, but I was craving written poetry, philosophy, storytelling. I wanted to “go into the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” as Thoreau said. I wanted to be quiet for a while, to light candles and submerge myself in books with the kinds of word combinations that would ignite the deepest recesses of my soul.
So one day, I darkened my hair and bought glasses so I could finally see clearly. I got rid of everything in my life that was adorable but unreliable—I’m looking at you VW Bug and went back to school. I had two classes to finish at Santa Monica Community College before transferring to UCLA.
When I saw cello lessons being offered as a class, my heart leaped and I immediately signed up. I walked into a music shop on Pico that smelled like warm apple cinnamon, orange peels, and memories. While I rented the most beautiful instrument I had ever seen in my life, I heard the crackle and pop of a needle hitting vinyl, and the lush sounds of Bach’s Cello Suite #1 filling the air. The beauty nearly brought me to my knees.
The first time I sat down with that gorgeous rich wood between my knees, wrapping my arms around it and dragging the bow across the strings, tears ran down my face, like I was hugging an old friend after a lifetime apart.
Maybe I should clarify—the tears came the first time I dragged a bow across the strings and it actually made a sound that wasn’t a horrible squeak.
There was a learning curve between deep rich notes and the unpleasant squeak when the bow didn’t hit right.
Still, I didn’t give up. Every night, the squeaking notes of my cello filled the air at the Royal Palace, mixed with the occasional lush sound. Kim, as my best friend and biggest cheerleader, didn’t complain about my squeaking, but clapped and cheered for the notes I got right, and completely understood my unexplainable pull to play the cello all of a sudden.
My dear friend Pleasant started calling me “Cello,” which she still calls me to this day.
I felt serious and grounded carrying my cello to class, like I was playing a role, the role of “studious scholar with her cello.”
And I understood: something about the cello centers me.
I was 29 years old when my cello class gathered for our first performance open to the public, and the only members of the audience were my circus and belly dance friends. They didn’t cover their ears as my class squeaked through Ode to Joy, but instead they clapped and cheered for us and brought me flowers, as if I could actually play.
I haven’t played since 1999. I have felt the urge, but my ex rolled his eyes and scoffed at me every time I mentioned it.
A few weeks ago, I started to feel like it was time for a big change in my life. I knew this because I started to crave the cello.
I wanted to hug its curvy, feminine shape like I was protecting someone I love, to rest my cheek against the scroll and drag the bow across the strings for that enchanting timbre.
Today, without knowing why, I found myself driving to the cello store, then hiking around my backyard forest with it in my arms. I sat down on an ancient rock and moved the bow across the strings until it finally started to fill the air with its sumptuous sensual tones. I wanted to play it by the fire and by the waterfall. I wanted to play for my pink flowers, dripping ferns, and fairy rocks. This time the cello didn’t make me weep, it made me laugh in delight and skip back down the hill.
This time, dragging the bow across the strings almost felt like an ode to joy.
Just looking at my cello feels transcendent and delicious, like that first bite into a warm chocolate croissant on a crisp Autumn morning.
I don’t know how my life is changing, I just know it’s happening, and somehow, in ways I can’t explain, the cello is helping.
