I have a complicated relationship with my left hand pinky finger.

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the word “pinky” comes from a now-obsolete 16th Century Scottish word meaning “a very small person or creature; a brat; an elf.” That definition gets me some of the way toward an accounting of its qualities: its sheer tininess, its capriciousness—defying my best efforts by arriving late or out of tune.

But what this definition of the pinky leaves out is how damn heroic it can be, which many a string player could attest to if we stopped to consider what we often ask of it. In fact, well into my recovery from dystonia, which seemed to manifest primarily in my ring finger, I insisted that my pinky was just fine the way it was.

“I really don't have any problems with four,” I averred in a lesson with Sophie Till, my recovery guide, a full year after our first meeting. “It's three that really fouls me up.”

She just stared back at me through the computer screen, lightly fingering the strings of her violin in noncommital silence with a slightly concerned look on her face.

That was the first clue.

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When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked for one summer as a counselor at an infamous practice boot camp in upstate New York. The place, in accordance with venerable music festival tradition, was old-school rustic to say the least: bland cafeteria food, mosquitoes the size of your head, the occasional rabid bat flying around inside one of the cabins. I actually looked forward to my lessons, because my teacher's studio was the only place on the entire campus besides the concert hall with air conditioning.

But what the place was really known for was discipline. “Practice Time,” as it was called, began promptly at 8 a.m. and lasted until 12, with ten-minute breaks each hour. As if that weren't enough, there was another hour after lunch. Students had a few hours before dinner to relax and be kids—that is, apart from their lessons, chamber music coachings, and rehearsals.

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Los lectores regulares de mi blog ya sabrán que recién volví al escenario tras una batalla plurianual con la distonía focal del músico. La recuperación fue un tremendo alivio, y me permitió lanzarme hacia una campaña de proyectos nuevos. Para la época de otoño, ideas que habían estado creciendo a lo largo de varios años parecían listas para brotar, y tenía muchísimas ganas de ponerlas en marcha.

Al principio, esta ráfaga de actividad era electrizante. La descarga de adrenalina y la voz que la acompañaba, diciéndome, “y después de eso harás eso y después de eso harás eso y...” eran novedosas, y francamente un poquito adictivas después de tanto estancamiento. Hice un montón, empecé a entrar de nuevo al mundo, conectarme y aprender muchas cosas, y me hizo sentir bien.

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Regular readers of my blog will already know that I've recently returned to professional playing following a multi-year battle with Musician's Focal Dystonia. Recovery was a tremendous relief, and gave me permission to throw myself into a whirlwind of new projects. Throughout the fall, ideas that had been percolating for years felt like they were ready to burst through, and I couldn't wait to get moving.

At first, this rush of activity was thrilling. That hit of adrenaline and the accompanying little voice in my head whispering, “and then after this you'll do that, and then you'll do that, and...” were novel, and frankly a little addictive after so much stagnation. I got a lot done, started getting back into the world and connecting with people, learning new things, and it felt great.

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About a month ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to discover that I'd knocked one of my pillows onto the floor in my sleep. It had fallen under my nightstand, so I had to contort myself into a rather awkward angle to reach for it, and as I tilted my upper body to the side and stretched out my arm, something in my head shifted and the room started spinning wildly. Before I could even register what was happening, I sat bolt upright and my arms thrust themselves down, clutching the mattress. After just a few seconds, I remembered I was resting safely on a stationary bed, anchored by gravity, and I relaxed. It was just vertigo—an annoying consequence of water stuck in my ear for weeks after a swim.

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Just over two years ago, the day before Halloween in fact, I made a horrifying discovery: after twenty-five years of playing the viola, over a dozen as a professional, I could not play Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

My playing had been a mess for over a year by then, thrown out of whack by the emergence of focal dystonia in my left hand, but I'd been pursuing treatment and thought things had been improving. In an effort to focus on retraining, I'd abandoned all of my gigs a couple of months after the symptoms first arose, and with diligent practice of my rehabilitative exercises I'd gained more control over my hand. But the progress hadn't been as swift as promised, so when a friend-of-a-friend recommended I get in touch with violinist Sophie Till, who'd helped him with a similar problem, I'd emailed her right away.

Our first lessons had mostly consisted of swinging my arms and throwing a handbag on my shoulder. Apparently, for the work to be effective, we needed to start from scratch. Which meant no playing. At all.

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He tocado Le quattro stagioni de Vivaldi, o por lo menos partes de la obra, varias docenas de veces. Una grabación —en casete, para los que se acuerdan de ellos— apareció en mi calcetín de Navidad cuando tenía más o menos diez años, y prácticamente la desgasté por escucharla tanto. Jamás hubiera pensado que grabarlo a fuego tan profundamente en los canales de mi cerebro me serviría ahora, mientras me preparaba para mi primera actuación pública en casi tres años.

Que estuviera pasando ya era un milagro. Me habían llamado a última hora —más precisamente, habían llamado a mi marido, pero como él no podía tocar, me lo ofreció a mí. “No sé si te sentís lista ya, pero me avisás, ¿sí?” me dijo, tras reenviarme el texto. Se retorció mi estómago, y medité sobre el asunto: un cuarteto de cuerdas, una obra que conocía bien, con amigas que por casualidad eran gente excepcionalmente amable. Aún no sabía qué pasaría, pero lo reconocí como mi mejor oportunidad.

“Ok, lo hago,” le dije, con el corazón en la garganta. Finalmente, era el momento.

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I've probably played Vivaldi's Le quattro stagioni, or at least parts of it, several dozen times. A recording—on cassette tape, for anyone who remembers those—appeared in my Christmas stocking when I was about ten, and I practically wore it out from repeated listening. I couldn't have known at the time that ironing it deeply into the grooves of my brain would anchor me now, as I gathered myself for my first public performance in almost three years.

That it was happening at all was a complete miracle. I'd been called at the last minute—more precisely, my husband had been called, but since he couldn't do the gig, he'd offered it to me. “I don't know if you feel ready yet, but let me know?” he'd said, forwarding me the text. My stomach clutched, and I mulled it over: string quartet, music I knew well, with good friends who happened to be exceptionally kind people. I still didn't know what would happen, but I recognized this as my best chance.

“Ok, I'll do it,” I said, my heart in my throat. Finally, it was time.

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Several weeks ago, I experienced something nearly every so-called “creative entrepreneur” has dealt with at least once in their career (if not once a week): Project Meltdown. I was only a few days away from a video shoot I'd been planning for several months when a major part of the preparations fell through at the last minute. I'd never taken on a media project with so many moving parts, and as I felt the support for the awkward load I'd been shouldering shift without warning, I was staggering to keep my balance.

Following this setback, there were plenty of technical and logistical issues to consider. Could I learn what I needed to know about the technology in time to fill in the gaps? Would I physically be able to make everything run smoothly? Would I be too distracted to play my best? Was my playing even ready, anyway?

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This past February I had the good fortune to spend two idyllic weeks in rural New Mexico for an intensive viola retreat. I enjoyed a respite from the bustle of NYC freelance life, luxuriating in the wide-open spaces and sweeping silence of the high desert, and I also worked hard, incorporating a new approach to physical and aural coordination into my technique. I interspersed practice sessions with long walks in nature and relaxing drives to local tourist attractions. But the most unexpected benefit of the time away was an exchange I shared with a friend I met on my trip, who taught me a difficult but valuable lesson about the power of being ordinary in a profession where specialness is often the most coveted currency.

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A number of years ago a conductor I knew from a handful of previous engagements invited me to be a guest principal for a concert with a chamber orchestra in Europe. When I arrived at the first rehearsal, exhausted from the trip, I was feeling a little apprehensive at the prospect of leading such a formidable ensemble as a guest—I had prepared well, but I'd never played with the orchestra and was the sole American flown halfway across the world to fill out and lead the ranks of more local players. After glancing around the rehearsal room at the other musicians taking out their instruments, tuning, and warming up on tricky passages, my eyes drifted to the principal viola stand, where I saw my would-be stand partner intently marking something in the part. I strode over to the stand and turned to her with a smile.

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A few years ago, while I was serving as the acting principal of the viola section of a regional orchestra, I played a concert of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that taught me something about letting go in performance and accepting the result. The orchestra had been looking to fill the position for several years, and I had been invited to sit in numerous times, never sure if I would be hired again, or for what chair, or who else they had in mind for the job. I tried to take each performance as seriously as a job interview: I had to demonstrate that I was competent and not afraid to take charge, even though I was a relative newcomer to the ensemble, much younger than the other players in the section, and had never held a permanent principal position in a professional orchestra.

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As I write this, I am recovering from a difficult week. November is a busy time for musicians, and after more than a year of paying intense attention to the swings of political drama in the American presidential election, I was eager to set aside the fear and disgust that the campaign had surfaced and put the daily distraction behind me. Furthermore, I was more than ready to elect the nation's first woman president, a gesture of visibility and empowerment for women and girls worldwide and a sign of national progress toward gender parity.  

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A few weeks ago, my husband and I played a show together in New York that I had plenty of reasons to be nervous about. For one thing, it had been a while since we'd played a formal concert as a duo--the previous year our free time had been consumed with planning our wedding, and the ongoing work of trying to build a teaching studio--so we felt a little rusty. I was also exhausted from driving 425 miles back to New York from the weeklong Art of Practicing Institute summer program the day before. In addition, the pieces we'd chosen to play were fairly virtuosic, and since we hadn't rehearsed in over a week there was no telling what kind of shape they would be in.

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Several weeks ago, as many freelance musicians must do from time to time, I chose to play a gig that really frustrated me. It paid decently, wasn’t that far away, the orchestra sounded great, and the music was wonderful. The problem was the conductor: though he meant well, he had a maddening habit of stopping the orchestra every few seconds to make a correction or insist that the players weren’t following him. He sought to control every detail of the music, forcing the players to render his idiosyncratic interpretation of the piece or risk being called out as incompetent or inattentive.

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A few days ago I was grudgingly contemplating the prospect of writing a long-overdue post to my blog on the inner life of being a performing musician. I had a collection of unfinished articles that had begun with promising ideas, but then fizzled out once I felt the inspiration wane. After posting my inaugural article “On Jealousy and True Belonging,” in July 2014, I had received messages from the thousands of musicians, both friends and strangers, who responded positively to its message about finding a sense of belonging no matter where we are in the world of music. Some of the messages were heartfelt thanks from people who felt my words had reached them at a critical time. Others were full of good-natured advice from older musicians. 

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One night after a concert I was having a drink with a colleague who told me a bizarre story about a graduate school audition he'd taken. While entering the subway en route to the audition, weighed down by his violin case and a large suitcase, he walked through the service gate behind someone else rather than swiping his card at the turnstile. Since he had an unlimited monthly pass, he had essentially pre-paid his fare and assumed there was nothing unlawful about walking through the gate. So he was stunned when a police officer stopped him, arrested him for fare evasion, and took him to jail.

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A friend recently told me about a master class he’d observed at a world-class chamber music festival. The young pianist in the class played a stylish and virtuosic showpiece with dazzling technical mastery. Then, something strange happened. As the coach leading the class began to work with the pianist, it became clear that while she played the piece with great panache and flawless technical command, she couldn’t work with any of the teacher’s ideas about shaping the music differently, and the energy in the room dissipated as he found himself without much to say.

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When I was a sophomore at Brown University, my teacher asked me to perform in a master class for one of the best violists in the world. I’d never played in a master class before, but despite my limited solo performing experience, the opportunity excited me. I chose a movement of Bach to prepare and worked on it with greater care and attention than ever before. My teacher seemed pleased with my progress and happy to present me as his student. When I stood up to perform, I felt eager to share my work with the audience, who included this world-renowned soloist.

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