IV. ...And the Major Lift
The truth came suddenly.
Yesterday, I was on day 6 of The Pain Psychology Center’s online program. Alan Gordon opened my eyes when he explained how inconsistent, shifting pain is a red flag for TMS, and how myriad “negative” emotions – from irritation to avoidance to hate – are all just species of fear, and the varietals of pain and dysfunction they engender can all be solved at the root by giving oneself loving attention. I’d been hearing that for the last two years, but somehow, hearing him crystallize that insight – and watching him heal patients in front of an audience – made all the difference.
I’d been using his insights to reflect on my fear of public speaking when I realized that I had made the injury up to protect myself from my fear of performing in public and to save myself from the drill-sergeant practice routine I'd developed. Somewhere inside I still associated playing cello with being judged and found wanting by my teacher and parents, of my struggle to be perfect. And when the "injury" became my whole life - because I "couldn't" type or exercise or anything – I had something I could use to get people's empathy, which I’d never felt I’d gotten enough of. So that's why I held onto this delusion for so long. Because it was so terribly useful. It enabled me to avoid all my fears and concentrate the pain I'd felt growing up into something tangible. All those years I spent away from my beloved cello, without the thing I'd defined myself by, that I used as a shield against the world, my voice so I didn't have to speak, I think I was punishing myself for having lost my way in college, for being shy and afraid to take chances or stand up for myself my entire life.
My pain has been good to me.
I lost so much: years of music, physicality, and vitality in the prime of my life. I lost my identity. My wings had been clipped and I fell to earth, seemingly consigned to a mundane fate like everyone untouched by creative inspiration. But I gained so much more. I've heard the life of the mind described as a house with many doors, all of which lead to the same place. If I hadn’t lost my cello, I’d still be knocking on the same door.
My journey led to a profound friendship with a brilliant, but obscure cello maker and influenced the direction of his groundbreaking designs. Because I “couldn’t” play cello, I became a drummer, singer, guitarist, songwriter and composer. Outside of music, I grew immensely as a human being. I am kinder now, to myself and others. I understand who I am, and why I am. That life is bigger than my limited perspective; the interconnectedness of all things. I can meditate for hours now – and I get much more from it. The things that used to debilitate me – a poor night’s rest, stomachaches, a rude neighbor – register faintly. Some of my best days are when I wake up feeling sick. I moved to work at my dream job. After years of being estranged from each other, I helped our family come back together. Most importantly, I have given up much of the fear and anger and misery I'd been nurturing like a poisonous houseplant my entire life.
And when I returned to cello, I became twice the player I’d been by embracing my inner romantic. It has become somewhat passé to play early classical music in the modern, romantic style. It's the sound the public associates with the cello, the one you hear at the movies: big, lush, emotional. It's a sound to fall in love with. But it’s not the sound Bach, Haydn, or even Beethoven knew. They were accustomed to the clear, modest resonance of gut strings in a smaller hall. There’s a warmth only gut has; the clever, lean excitement of a highly articulated bowing on a pre-Tourte bow. I spent years before and after my injury immersed in period performance, and, paradoxically, also studying the technique of Janos Starker, who, although decidedly anti-Romantic, was anything but period correct.
Though I learned much, and still prefer to listen to period recordings, I discovered that emulating my new, more intellectual musical heroes was limiting me. I had more to say as an artist now, but my cello could only whisper. I gained great nuance but lost my singing double forte, and with it the magnificent voice that had made cello so emotionally compelling to me. So I returned to my childhood reference recording: Mischa Maisky, 1986. Anyone who’s searched for the Bach Suites on Youtube will know it. Maisky’s playing is sometimes criticized for being excessively romantic – especially for Bach – but there is much to admire about his technique and tone. I discovered the bigger I sounded, the more relaxed I was, and the more freely I could move around the cello.
As a child, trying to recreate Maisky’s voluminous tone had created the same kind of tightness I'd gotten from my “period correct” phase. But now, that sound was Act II of my rebirth as a cellist. Act III? Victor Sazer’s book New Directions in Cello Playing, which really is a blueprint for a radical new way of approaching string playing generally. In other words, I found the best way to achieve Starker’s ideal of a lifetime of healthy playing was to sound like Maisky; and the best way to sound like Maisky was to play like Sazer.
Like Dr. Sarno, Sazer is largely ignored or ridiculed by the mainstream of his profession. As with mindbody medicine, it took me two years – and overcoming a lot of skepticism – to implement his odd ideas. I still use much of the technique I’d learned in music school, and it wouldn’t have been possible for me to learn Sazer’s method on my own without that foundation. My experiments started. I played with my thumb freed from the underside of the neck; fretted on the side of the string, never pressing completely down to the fingerboard; held my cello on my left leg only; pulled my bow in circles, rather than releasing weight in relatively straight lines. Most of his ideas are useful in performance, others mainly in practice.
If I’d never gotten “injured”, I wouldn’t have given Sazer’s ideas or Maisky’s warmth another chance. I have the cavernous sound – and more importantly, the balanced technique – that I had only glimpsed all those years ago.
