#found a friend who will go to the elgar cello concerto with me next week guys my life is perfect

[i-dont-talk-for-days-on-end]

Uhhh I just thought about how Holmes would probably go to concerts from time to time before he knew Watson, spending either an unreasonable amount of money for a ticket (because his consulting had not really taken off yet) but he NEEDED to see the violinist's fingering, or sueezing in somewhere in the backrows because he just solved a case and he needed something other than cocaine for a celebration - and how much nicer it must have been to go with Watson later, who didn't know half as much about music as Holmes but would get excited because Holmes was so excited and they could sit there TOGETHER, and later Holmes could infodump on Watson about the conductor's carreer and that one scandal (yes really Watson that'swhat happened!) and Watson would giggle and then Holmes could infodump some more, and the next morning Watson would maybe whistle a little tune from the concert when coming down for breakfast and ah. Yep. That.

[fangirling-throughlife]

Music is in my DNA. I think there aren’t many Spaniards who don’t have music in their DNA. And if you go to Valencia, it’s almost impossible to find someone who hasn’t studied music at least for a year, who doesn’t know to play an instrument. It’s normal, considering that there are 1.686 musical groups (bands, orchestras, choirs, big bands...) in Valencia. 40.000 musicians, 64.000 music students. Our dearest memories are linked to music from the beginning: Fallas, the weeks of festivities, 9 d’octubre, Easter... I can sing you at least one piece that matches every major religious and civil festivity throughout the year. 

I was raised around music. My grandparents gave money to the town’s band to build their rehearsal space and bar, my great-uncle is the oldest member of the band, my dad is a musician... My mum doesn’t know how to read music, or how to match a pitch, nor does she have any sense of rythm. But she loves music, and my childhood was filled with Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart, Eros Ramazotti, Andrea Bocelli, Pavarotti, amongst many more. 

I started to study music at age 7. I was too young to start with an instrument, so I studied a first year of musical theory before they let me decide. Back then, the opera house of Valencia was just open, and there was a segment about it on TV every single day. The instrument I saw every day was the violin, so, of course, I wanted that. Because my dad was a member of a symphonic band, the violin was out of the question, but I was so stubborn that they let me pick the next best thing: the cello. I really struggled with it. I was a quick learner but my teacher didn’t let me go beyond what was recommended for my age. Then every other cellist in my music school left, and my grandmother told me the cello was the most useless instrument of all. Not having any famous role models (back then YouTube wasn’t very well known, and definitely censured in my house after they found out my best friend looked up dirty videos on it) or even role models in my everyday life, I wanted to quit. I started to play the saxophone (again, bribed by my family and a couple of friends) while I was deciding if I stopped with music altogether or just with the cello. As a last resort, my parents transferred me to a public music school in a city not too far away, where I had plenty of other cellists and other string musicians. I started orchestra lessons, then chamber music, then I got invited to play in other student orchestras during the holidays and suddenly I knew that was what I wanted to do in my life. I stopped making homework, but composed and played the piano instead. I played 2-3 hours a day, missed classes to go to concerts. I was set on being a professional musician.

After giving in to pressure from outside to have a back-up plan, I focused a bit more on high school, and, with top grades from the class in sciences, my grades dropped (a little bit) in music school. I graduated with very good marks, but I still decided to wait a year to focus on prepare auditions while I started something at university. That first year almost became the end of me. I got depressed, I had almost daily panic attacks, and after a little more than a month my mum figured out that stopping with music classes had caused such a big change on my life that I didn’t know how to go on. That year I started having serious bone and muscular problems that made me go to physiotherapy for 3 months. That was the moment when I had to give up my dream. 

Since then, I’ve had panic attacks during rehearsals, I’ve played as a soloist, I’ve been first cello for 3 years in the orchestra where I spent my high school and university years, I’ve done small tours around the north of Spain and even premiered some pieces. By the beginning of lockdown I was involved in 3 different orchestral projects (two of them linked to a higher musical education institution) and my band, even though I was finishing Biochemistry. 

Now I moved. Some of the best music professors in Europe are in Belgium, but I can’t find amateur orchestras or even symphonic bands to join. Like, not with a level to satisfy me after 12 years of musical education and 10 years of orchestral experience. I had my back-up cello (because MY cello stayed in Spain, waiting for me to come home and go to 1 or 2 rehearsals), which needed a lot of tending (basically, horrible strings). The first two weeks I didn’t play at all, because I cried every time I looked at it and remembered that my dearest instrument needs to go to the atelier before I can play on it again. Then I progressively started to play more and more, and now I was playing over 2 hours a day, studying technique and concerto’s by myself. Until I decided to change those horrible strings, and today, in the span of 15 minutes, two of my medium-good strings snapped (we suspect there’s a wood splinter somewhere). It sounds stupid, even more considering that I’m starting a Master’s degree in 15 days, but I kinda lost my purpose. The moment when I’d finished the dishes and the news was over, and I had the time to start and play was hard, and I always thought I didn’t have to do it. But the moment I started, I didn’t want to stop, and I always had to because my fingers were about to start bleeding, or because it was dinner time or something. 

Now that’s gone (at least, until I find a decent atelier around here and they fix it). I can’t have that moment when I sit barefoot and with my eyes closed, playing El Cant dels Ocells and connecting with something bigger than myself, occasionally with some tears. Or the moment of triumph when that last scale was right or I got to 100% of an Allegro tempo. 

I’ve spent half an hour listening to pasodobles, which are pieces usually written for wind bands to play on the street, and actually crying a bit. This is my past, my present, and I want to keep it in my future so badly. I never thought I’d miss something about my life back at home, not after the hellish last years I’ve had. But now I realise I miss having music everywhere, surrounding me. I miss being part of that. Of playing Shostakovich and feeling like we’re soldiers in the Russian Revolution, playing Tchaikovsky and trying to figure out what he wanted to explain, playing Elgar and actually mourning, playing Beethoven and feeling every feeling in the world, all at once. 

There’s a saying about children and teenagers in my band. “He/She has musical notes in their veins”. I’ve heard it being said about so many people in my 22 years of life, including my brother and myself. I know this is stupid from a biological point of view, but I truly believe that music is a lifestyle, and, in my case, a lifesaver.