Why didn’t I decide to learn theremin? Something so exotic the fewest people know if you’re playing well. I was thinking uillean pipes for a while, but those are expensive, and have a 2-year waiting list when you order them. And besides, there are tons of uillean pipes geeks out there.

Of course, now I find out that every instrument is expensive, except tin whistle. More on tin whistles some other time.

So I picked cello. Right now, I have a cheap Chinese-made rental cello with a spike that doesn’t want to come out. So my cello equipment goes like, cello, bow, case, flat-nosed pliers.

What I’m referring to as a spike here is that spike-like metal bit that sticks out the bottom of the cello and holds it up at the right level. For all I know, “spike” could even be the proper term.

Usually I leave it sticking out a little ways so I can get a grip on it. But yesterday when I sat down to practice it had gone all the way in and so I sat there, cursing and breaking fingernails, trying to get ahold of this little protrusion of metal until finally giving up and looking for the flat-nosed pliers.

Which of course have gone AWOL. Not in the drawer of odds and ends in the entry way. Not in the drawer of chaos in the kitchen. Meaning I have to go all the way to my shop in the cellar to look for a pair. Found them, pulled the spike out to the proper length, practiced.

This morning, I noticed the pliers next to my PC in the office, no idea how they got there.

Anyway. Tonight is cello lesson night. I appear to have reached the point in my musical development where I can now have musical breakdowns, and I’ve been having some. No doubt there will be another one tonight.

You know – I reach a level with a tune, where I feel I have it down, maybe I know it by heart or can get through it with no big mistakes. Then a new element is added – the teacher says something like “stop moving around so much,” or “try playing more expressively, varying intensity, instead of playing every note the same,” and this new factor causes the tune to collapse into its individual elements again.

Then, basically, you start over and put those elements back together again, but when you finish, you find yourself at a higher level. I remarked on this to my teacher who said, “yeah, don’t feel bad, it happens to everyone.”

And I suppose it does. Things progress until you reach a deadlock of one kind or another, then some crisis breaks the stasis, everything collapses, but if you can manage to get it all back together, you end up on a higher level. Perhaps.

If you can manage to get it back together.