Soundly emerging.

Fingertips sore this morning from playing the guitar and the fiddle for the first time in moons yesterday – the pads of the left hand, the fingering digits, strings cutting black lines into calluses eventually but I’ve got to work my way back up to that. A couple weeks, a month of playing daily and the muscles will come back, the skin will grow rought first and then shiny-hard – to hammer down on the strings without whimpering. I miss it. That’s what I always realize after picking up my instrument from a long absence. Miss performing, miss goofing around making the bow bounce across skittering notes, flinging tunes out the window halfway done and then onto something else more sombre, or not – more chaos at the right moment is always worth going after if the crowd is right for it. I’m my own favourite audience.

Springtime is usually when I pick both up again if there’s been a dormancy. Season of campfires and outdoor jam sessions – I feel like a bit of a fraud that it’s on the fun stuff that entices me – I’ve never been much of a working musician after all with my government gig – and as much as I love to play here and there, I’ve never loved it enough to do it all the time. It’s a lot of hard work to play professionally, make a living of it – and the stage time doesn’t always make up for that grind. Even back in the Flying Folk days I never thought – gee, wouldn’t this be great to do full time – though I did often wish we had more time for touring and recording than we did.

It’s always amazing once I have that fiddle back in my hands how much a part of me it is without trying. The fit under the chin the V of my elbow angled perfectly just the way I was taught at age five. It is mine and me when I bring the bow up to meet strings. A muscle memory from earliest childhood, the fingers go down in patters automatic as I pull back and forth, belongs to me all over again. Why I put it down in the first place never fails to make me wonder. What’s wrong with me? How could I leave this, this part of me abandoned on the wall?