A Novella in installments, tracing the intermingling autobiographies of a boy and a violin, spanning over a century. The previous episode is right here. To find any episode, look here.

(The protagonist posing with some old friends: a Japanese shakuhachi, A Zimbabwean mbira, and a good ol’ American jaw harp.)

(11) – Becoming Iain’s Favorite, Albany, 1901

It was like a coma. That’s what the medical experts would have called it. A blackness so complete that no impressions reach the awareness. Only a vague strain of a feeling was around some of the time. It was ephemeral, and one doubted seriously whether it came from without or within. The dull sensation that something was amiss with the world. With life. With my existence. It was annoyingly less peaceful than perfect death, so I imagine, for the peace of unblemished nothingness was periodically corrupted by this nagging suffering of the idea that I was yet in existence somehow, a cruel dull limbo, and indeed that the existence in question consisted of agony. Agony — otherwise bereft of experience.

Another characteristic of this condition is that time sensitivity becomes impossible. Duration fades to black. It was only some months later on that I learned that the length of time for my dreamless sleep was nearly two years. Two years had transpired — in a lifeless and worse, musicless, corner of a closet. But then one miracle day a boy — the boy, Rowena’s younger brother — came to fetch my case from its prison and carried us off to his bedroom. And we were happily stunned to experience that he avoided placing us inside his quite similar closet, electing instead to display us unashamedly against a wall facing a small window. And the alive rhythms of morning light and fading mysterious dusk and sleepy night gradually coaxed Bow and myself back into a wakeful consciousness. After a small but ferociously anxious number of days, the boy, who was called Iain, gently picked us up and opened our case. A shattering event in our biographies!

Permit me, attentive reader, to indulge myself a brief detour so that I can describe to you the existential plight of countless ‘articles of utility’ which inhabit the human world in varying but increasing states of neglect and discard. For it is my hard won conviction that humans truly remain ignorant and therefore naively innocent about the enormous burden of suffering they cast upon us simply by ignoring us. The great human mistake concerning the material world of objects, especially those devised out of mankind’s ingenuity or necessity, is to not honor or perceive the essence underlying them all. For what is often called spirit, is a foundational ingredient for all things. Not a dreamt up ancillary fancy. And this spirit does not fall out of existence once the object in question either fails to amuse or strike one as important or worthy. For all things require idea and initial conception to descend into physical existence. And physical existence is sacrifice! This is true of human lives as well though very few realize it. Certain cosmic goals cannot be achieved without a commitment to operate for awhile within the physical earthly theater. But what is purely spirit will always experience it as suffering to make this descension from the region of idea and concept into material reality. And this is also true of the humblest assemblages of matter employed to fashion the numerous and varied technical and convenient articles which characterize cultural modernity. There is a kind of imprisonment of consciousness occuring on a very large scale to actualize all of civilization.

The most ennobling thing that persons can do is bear this sacrifice in mind on the part of matter, and anything condemned to an existence of pure utility. Especially for artistic objects, this virtue succeeds fairly well and often. But servitude is servitude, and ignorance about it results in extensive and pervading gloom, while gratitude for it enlivens all matter in potential. The matter upon earth looks to humans to uplift them — us — eventually. This is a kind of sacred secret. And mischievious rebellion is not impossible in the future if insufficient forces of kindness and grace and even an artistic frame of mind do not color more and more the human attitude towards created things. I can assure you that violins and bows and cases know this truth. But it is also known by the insignificant pebble and the plastic tie sealing a loaf of bread in the grocery market. We objects stand in awe of humans because we recognize you have the spark of the highest divinity within you. But we mourn your sleepiness to what is real and your foolish obsessions, and indeed are often shocked by them.

Perhaps these brief and imperfect descriptions illuminate the degree of elation I felt when Iain brought me to his room, placed us upon his bed, and opened our case after such a lengthy dreamless sleep. The wonder and sheer desire in his eyes were like the brightest sunrise to me. He passed his fingers over my surface and strings with a kind of awe and wishfulness that I would not forget for half a century. And though he knew almost nothing of music, I knew that something good was going to happen.

_______RS

NOTE: The next episode, if it exists yet, is right here. To find any episode, look here.

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