I recently watched a violin tutorial lesson on Youtube by Ray Chen, the famous violinist from Australia who has the face of an Asian Adonis but also the virtuoso violin technique of Nicolo Paganini, which is to say, he's better at everything than me. Even his teaching style seemed crisp and engaging, explaining concepts with well-rehearsed analogies, tips, eloquence. As someone who once dabbled in violin and know at least a little of what is required to play the instrument well (despite not possessing those abilities), it's like watching someone with alien power just do it so much better than you, and realizing you were just not destined to do what Ray Chen is able to do. (And that's OK, not all of us are built like that). Oh, and I realized that my old violin teacher might be out of a job if everyone can just go online and watch Ray Chen provide more engaging lessons with his cherubic smiling face and grin.
Violin is one of those disciplines that requires precision, or accuracy in everything you do, from the way you hold the violin at a certain angle, to where you place the fingers of you left hand to ensure the correct pitch of the note (just a slight tilt one way of your finger can throw the note off balance), to how much pressure you exert with your right hand on the bow to where you play with the bow, to get the timing right on the beat always, never rushing or dragging, for the whole piece that you are playing. Oh and don't forget about vibratto! Whereas baseball is a lot of moving pieces but it all just needs to come together in that one moment of throwing the ball or swinging the bat, violin is just hundreds and thousands of actions coming together for many many seconds for however long the piece is, and when done accurately, is more of a piece of art because you know how much someone put into it to make it sound so good throughout. It takes precision, and I've never liked precision in most things. I've always been described as a little rough about my work, to which I don't disagree; I tend to do just well enough to get the job done, like just having a car to get from place to place, not caring about the fanciess or the finer points of the car. This philosophy has served me well, in say, not being picky about the quality about my food or sleeping arrangements, but it DOES NOT serve me well in places where high quality is necessary and apparent for all to see (or in violin's case, all listening to hear) where every mistake rings out like a pimple on one's face, making others wince.
One of my closest friends in high school was always better than me at violin; he reminds me a lot of Ray Chen, down to the Adonis-like good looks and attention to detail, being careful about what to wear, his actions in everything he did. He liked building bridges and delving into mechanical engineering in his free time; I liked joining as many clubs as I could to broaden my experiences. I imagine he practiced violin to get better at the art from and perfect his craft; I did it to satisfy my parents, get it over with so I could watch TV and move on to the next thing. I was just not into the precision as much as other violinsts were, and that true violinists needed to be. I can see that in other violinists, how much care and pride they take in their music. It's really admirable; I wish I had that.
Lack of precision also is a double-edged sword in other facets of my life: chess, a game I really care about and want to do better at, also requires a certain level of precision, which has eluded me. The best chess players have to play the best move every move, for however many moves it takes to win the game. You can make 5, 10, 20 moves all with precision and the best move you could have made, but if the 21st move is not precise, that can lead to disaster. I feel like that's life for me: other than basic mental math, of which I can give very precise answers, I'm always just a little off, or can't sustain the level of precision needed: in trivia I'll mix up someone's name like pronouncing proboscis monkey as probiscus, not knowing the full story that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's full title is "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," answered question of "who wrote the biography of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk?" as "Walter Jacobson," not Walter Isaacson, etc. Just always a little off; it's plagued me my whole life. Guess not everyone can be Ray Chen, otherwise he wouldn't be Ray Chen anymore.
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