Kiersten’s Blog

Obviously she's never had lessons. Check out that atrocious bow hold. (This was a year ago.)

Today London and I are thankful for violins.  That’s what London said, but I’m not sure if I believe her.  You’ll understand why soon enough.  When I think about maybe teaching London violin, I can’t believe any child could be taught that young.  I’m sure it would make a world of difference if it wasn’t her mother teaching her.  I started the violin when I was London’s age.  I honestly can’t believe my mother let me.  I don’t know how she stayed sane, especially with another child a year older taking cello lessons.  I have asked London a couple of times if she wants me to teach her how to play the violin and she tells me that she already knows how.  I’m not going to push it, but the other day she finally did tell me that she wanted me to teach her.  Anyway, that’s not what I was going to talk about.  I was going to talk about how London really doesn’t like the violin.  It’s kind of strange.  The violin has always been a significant part of my life until I had children.  I haven’t played a whole lot since I had London four years ago.  I guess I’m just busy with other things now, but I do try and pick up gigs here and there.  Today I played in church.  It hasn’t happened for a while so it was nice to play again.  My lovely cousin, Brooke, was nice enough to come and accompany me.  It was so fun to play with her again.  We haven’t done that since we were roommates in college ten years ago!  I can’t believe it’s been that long.  So I was over at her place practicing the other day and London came with me.  As soon as I started to play, she went into hysterics.  It’s not just that my violin playing is taking me away from her.  It’s something else.  For some reason, the music really bothers her.  She couldn’t stop screaming.  Finally I told her to go into the girls’ room and close the door and turn on music in there so she couldn’t hear us.  I really have no clue what the problem is, but she was really, truly upset.  She gets that way with some of her toys that play music too.  When she turns them on, she gets a really sad look on her face and starts to cry.  I’m not sure what to do about it.  It makes me sad that she feels that way about me playing pretty music.  She’ll even admit that it’s pretty, it just makes her sad.  It’s no wonder I can’t play my violin nearly as well as I used to.  I’m still thankful for it and hope that someday I’ll be able to play it more.