Quiet Streams

'How has practice been this week?'

I'm unwinding my bow, watching the snowy hairs lose their tautness until they are perfectly relaxed. I slide it into its case and pick up my violin.

'Good.' 

My teacher looked up, waiting. 'But?'

I slowly rubbed the tiny flecks of sparkling resin from the warm, honeyed wood of my violin.

'I just don't feel...creative, or something. I can't feel the music. I'm playing this beautiful Beethoven Romance and it's just...I don't know. Blank?'

She takes off her glasses, her blue eyes wise and pondering. She leans back in her chair.

'With art, you can't always feel creative. Impossible! The feeling part - that will come. In the meantime, don't wait around for inspiration to come to you. Revel in the miracle of each note. The wonder that, by drawing the bow across the string you create sound. Beautiful sound. Feel the pleasure of your fingertips pressing into the steel. The very bones of violin playing.'

On my way home, I pondered that thought - gazing out the window at the autumnal sunset. 

'Marvel at the miracle of each note. The wonder that, by drawing the bow across the string you create sound. Beautiful sound.' And by adding notes, high, low, dark or light, slow and brooding or skittering merrily after each other, lightning fast - all these fitted together make up an exquisite melody. Music.

The next day I am up at dawn to practice. Tiny wrens flit from branch to branch outside my window, and I hear a magpie warbling lustily somewhere in the garden. Do birds wait around for inspiration to sing?

I open my case, gently lift the instrument from its velvet bed, the cool wood familiar against my skin. Just play. Fingers poised on the strings. I start to play, releasing the first pure line of a Bach Partita into the clear silence of the morning. Just at that moment, the sun slipped its radiant head from the clouds and a beam of warm light filtered through the window, resting on my violin and making it glow.

I smile. 

Inspiration.