SEARCHING FOR BACH
The cello sounded like heaven. Or whatever heaven sounds like when you’re twelve.
"She gave me a cello. It had a crack running up its back, which I eventually discovered muffled its resonance and gave it a slightly wheezy tone. But when I lugged it home and took my first tentative steps up the C major scale, it sounded fine to me. In fact, it sounded like heaven. Or whatever heaven sounds like when you’re twelve.
I didn’t love anything at that point in my life. Maybe I loved books a little too much, but that sounds so precious and trite I can barely bring myself to admit it. Boys were either miniature and childlike, horking back globs of errant spit, or towering and scary, smoking weed around the corners of the school’s taupe buildings. Girls were angry and pretty or ugly and shy. Mostly I was trying not to be seen.
The cello didn’t help. Strap one onto the side of a big girl and you get something almost comical, the girl hugging the cello like a body, the cello a distorted mimicry of the shape the girl’s body would one day take on. It was the first thing I loved best."
"She gave me a cello. It had a crack running up its back, which I eventually discovered muffled its resonance and gave it a slightly wheezy tone. But when I lugged it home and took my first tentative steps up the C major scale, it sounded fine to me. In fact, it sounded like heaven. Or whatever heaven sounds like when you’re twelve.
I didn’t love anything at that point in my life. Maybe I loved books a little too much, but that sounds so precious and trite I can barely bring myself to admit it. Boys were either miniature and childlike, horking back globs of errant spit, or towering and scary, smoking weed around the corners of the school’s taupe buildings. Girls were angry and pretty or ugly and shy. Mostly I was trying not to be seen.
The cello didn’t help. Strap one onto the side of a big girl and you get something almost comical, the girl hugging the cello like a body, the cello a distorted mimicry of the shape the girl’s body would one day take on. It was the first thing I loved best."
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