I'm violin-less for a week. I don't think I can cope. What's worse is, I'm probably my-own-violin-less for more than a week. Who knows how long that means.

I'll explain. My violin very badly needed a service, and it appeared it needed it more badly than I thought, tuning was very hard and keeping it tuned was even harder, so it's needing a huge operation and I just brought it into the surgery. Oh my God. Well, surgery, it's a violin-maker. He was going to work on it for a week and have it nice and perfectly finished for me next Saturday, in return for a huge bulge of money. But the poor man (who I respect greatly) is a week behind on his work. There's too many people hopping around this town who play violin and don't look after their instrument properly :(. Which is strange, because I hardly ever see anyone moving around carrying a violin. And if I do it's usually tourists who intend to earn some money playing on the street...

So, if Loerakker (the violin-maker) doesn't get my violin finished before next week, he'll kindly lend me a replacement violin. That's not as good as it sounds. Each violin has it's own proportions in build and bowing-pressure/sound output. And each violinist knows their own violin, and the way it's played best.

This means that if I get a replacement violin, I'll have to spend lots of my time finding the proper way to play that violin, try and find out the left-hand-fingers distances for each new note so I can play in key, and then try and automate it, so I don't have to think about my technique while I play. The result of that will be, that actually studying the music I'm playing at the moment is out of the question, because I'll be too busy trying to figure out that violin. And by the time I'll be that far, it'll probably be time to go and hand it in to get my own violin back. Then I'll have to start all over again getting used to my own violin.

Another disadvantage is, that if Loerakker gives me a violin to borrow which is "better" than my own, with for instance a nicer resonance or warmer sound, I'll be disappointed with my own violin when I get it back. But more likely is that I'll get a violin from him which is worth the same money-wise, which will mean it'll sound worse, and I'll be terribly annoyed with it and won't want to bother trying to get to know the violin � which will mean no playing at all. (It'll sound worse because my violin is worth less than what it sounds like, because it's had many, many restorations which downs it's value, even though the sound quality stays mostly the same.)

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I feel so

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It's all a bit scary seeing I'm going to be needing my violin a lot the coming months. I'm using it for my end-project for school, and I need it for playing during the admission for the advanced music section at school next year. Also, I need it to practise with this person who's going to accompany me, I wrote about it here. I've finally got him to make an appointment with me... for the Monday straight after next Saturday. So I'll have had my violin back for two days � or I'll have had a replacement violin for two days and therefore one-and-a-half a day to get to know the new violin before I can play with him properly :-/.

My Mother gave me a little pressy when I got back from bringing my violin to the doctor's. I told her I'll be without a violin for a week while I sulked, and she gave me this silver package, and she'd written something on it:

It reads: So your hands don't have to be without a violin completely. Sweet ey? :). The first word is "Zodat", it's Dutch for "so that". But she decided to write the rest in English, because Dutch just wasn't appropriate; I might have hit her. The package contained a packet of serviettes, with old-style painted pictures on them of a violin and bow laid over piano keys and a music stand in the background � everything filled, meaning no empty parts of nothing on the serviette. Ah good sentence. Easy to understand. Yes.

I didn't think I'd be so sad not having my violin with me. I'd expected it to be tiresome or tedious, but not that it would depress me. I've been away from my violin before, but only because I was away from home, on holiday or something comparable. But I've actually separated from my violin now. I've actually given it to someone else, out of free will. To a stranger (who I trust nevertheless). I have no responsibility for it any more. I've laid that in the hands of an old man. My violin means so much to me.

~ Music ~