One-Shot: The Violin
Feb 11, 2016 1:15:02 GMT -5
Post by Zen on Feb 11, 2016 1:15:02 GMT -5
(I did this for an English assignment with the objective of reflecting on a childhood event using two instances each of metaphor, simile and imagery.
I just thought I'd share it; I'm a bit more proud of my writing than my violin-playing.)
I will never, for the rest of my days, forget the fateful day upon which I left a child orchestra recital in flames, in the worst way possible. Perhaps some backstory is needed- when I was young and smelled of spongebob-scented shampoo,I was far and away the worst student in my violin class. This was in the fifth grade, if I recall correctly- and to be blunt, I was a complete idiot in the fifth grade. During violin class I, in absolutely no exaggeration, had absolutely no idea how to play a violin, in the months of teachings and practice we were allotted. At the time, I didn’t even care. For the vast majority of the classes I let my bow limply glance over the strings without any force, and each passing moment I silently prayed that I wouldn’t be heard. In the unfortunate times in which my prayers were not answered, I unleashed a noise not unlike that of a rabid monkey, lit on fire and being stamped upon repeatedly by an irish football player wearing cleats. The weathered and wrinkled face of my old, scornful music teacher will forever be burned into my mind as he methodically described the phenomenon in which one terrible player ruins an entire performance.
Since then, it’s been a useful law of reality I’ve taken to heart and seen in practice many times.
The screeching fire-monkey-with-cleat-marks-on-its-face returned one final time during our class’s recital. It was truly unfortunate, too, since (I assume so, although my memory is fuzzy) the rest of the class was perfectly adequate in playing the violin, at least for their age. I was just the obligatory class idiot- better me than another, honestly. I haven’t the slightest clue why I’d agreed to perform with my class a set of music I’d neither the patience to memorize nor the skills to actually perform, but the one question more pressing would be why my teacher let me, fully aware of just how incredibly terrible I was. I played out a screech that could shatter souls; one could describe my playings as like the flawless auditory representation of the ravenous flames found in the seventh circle of hell, forever isolated from the grace of god and damned to an existence of endless torture and agony. When I played, angels cried; demons cringed; and God could be found looking back into the book of Genesis with a bright red pen and a highlighter, trying to find out what went wrong during the seven days of creation. Richard Dawkin’s new TED talk cites a recording of me playing the violin as his new flagship argument against the existence of a higher power by virtue of the existence of evil-incarnate among mortal string instruments. Not only do the prophecies of the Norse Ragnarok and the Rapture of Jesus Christ mention the destruction of mortalkind by the hand of my terrible playing of a simple instrument, but scientists predict that another repeated performance will spell out a terminal chain reaction leading to the de-energisation of the milky way galaxy, followed by all of its neighbors, until the universe is reduced to a miserable blob of nothingness, ending existence as we know it.
I was pretty bad at the violin.
I just thought I'd share it; I'm a bit more proud of my writing than my violin-playing.)
I will never, for the rest of my days, forget the fateful day upon which I left a child orchestra recital in flames, in the worst way possible. Perhaps some backstory is needed- when I was young and smelled of spongebob-scented shampoo,I was far and away the worst student in my violin class. This was in the fifth grade, if I recall correctly- and to be blunt, I was a complete idiot in the fifth grade. During violin class I, in absolutely no exaggeration, had absolutely no idea how to play a violin, in the months of teachings and practice we were allotted. At the time, I didn’t even care. For the vast majority of the classes I let my bow limply glance over the strings without any force, and each passing moment I silently prayed that I wouldn’t be heard. In the unfortunate times in which my prayers were not answered, I unleashed a noise not unlike that of a rabid monkey, lit on fire and being stamped upon repeatedly by an irish football player wearing cleats. The weathered and wrinkled face of my old, scornful music teacher will forever be burned into my mind as he methodically described the phenomenon in which one terrible player ruins an entire performance.
Since then, it’s been a useful law of reality I’ve taken to heart and seen in practice many times.
The screeching fire-monkey-with-cleat-marks-on-its-face returned one final time during our class’s recital. It was truly unfortunate, too, since (I assume so, although my memory is fuzzy) the rest of the class was perfectly adequate in playing the violin, at least for their age. I was just the obligatory class idiot- better me than another, honestly. I haven’t the slightest clue why I’d agreed to perform with my class a set of music I’d neither the patience to memorize nor the skills to actually perform, but the one question more pressing would be why my teacher let me, fully aware of just how incredibly terrible I was. I played out a screech that could shatter souls; one could describe my playings as like the flawless auditory representation of the ravenous flames found in the seventh circle of hell, forever isolated from the grace of god and damned to an existence of endless torture and agony. When I played, angels cried; demons cringed; and God could be found looking back into the book of Genesis with a bright red pen and a highlighter, trying to find out what went wrong during the seven days of creation. Richard Dawkin’s new TED talk cites a recording of me playing the violin as his new flagship argument against the existence of a higher power by virtue of the existence of evil-incarnate among mortal string instruments. Not only do the prophecies of the Norse Ragnarok and the Rapture of Jesus Christ mention the destruction of mortalkind by the hand of my terrible playing of a simple instrument, but scientists predict that another repeated performance will spell out a terminal chain reaction leading to the de-energisation of the milky way galaxy, followed by all of its neighbors, until the universe is reduced to a miserable blob of nothingness, ending existence as we know it.
I was pretty bad at the violin.