The Violinist on the Beach
Sometimes gifts fall from the sky.
Recently, I was feeling both hopeful and tired after talking with a director of an institution on how they could be more antiracist. My tank felt empty. Go to the lake, Spirit said, and so I did, and there was a man playing his violin. The music was beautiful: I could instantly tell he was a master of music. And how much I have missed music! I stopped dead in my tracks and watched. He was playing a song that was sad and forlorn, and it was as if each note from each string reached deep into my soul, stroked the grief and sadness within me, and then graciously became a sound — the sound was the music he was playing. Listening to the music was like listening to my soul. Sad, beautiful, poignant, wistful. I stood there in my mask, I started to cry. I heard my spirit’s sadness. And yet, through the music, I was connected to this man. When was the last time I heard live music? When was the last time I felt connected? I cried harder.
A nearby woman saw me crying and she introduced herself. That is my husband, she said. He plays for Lyric Opera. I can tell, I responded.
And then, as if that weren’t medicine enough, he started playing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”. Though I am no longer Christian, I know the words still, and I sang. How silenced I have been all this time! Silenced in the silence of my apartment, silenced behind masks, the silence of fear, of condemnation, of divisions. And yet: I felt so connected to him. And so, I sang loudly, because I didn’t know when I was going to have an opportunity to sing again.
A crowd grew: A group of about 15–20. Phones came out. We gathered around the violinist who knew how to caress, who could draw out of us our pain so that it wouldn’t stagnate within us any longer.
The instant I heard his music, it felt like a deep, primal longing of the child for the mother. The music. The mother. He played and I sang as loudly as I could — it felt like the mother was feeding me, nourishing me through music. The spirit was descending and penetrating, healing wounded parts. I wept hard in my mask. The feeling of touch, being caressed and understood.
After playing many Christmas songs, he packed up his violin, and we all applauded again. We shouted out our gratitudes, over and over. When I got to my apartment, I was quiet inside. It was a quiet of gratitude, of having witnessed and experienced something holy: The connection of human to human, human to music, human to the Numinous. The quiet went deep and I paused, trying to articulate what this was. I fished around within me until I could find the words: It is the type of quiet that an infant has after having been fed at the breast. The longing has been sated. The child is stilled.
Stilled.
Hush.
It’s okay.
