Making Music

MY OLDER SISTER, a retired professional musician who remains active in music among other civic activities, recently decided to become a dulcimer player. Her main instrument in the military band was the flute, and she still takes lessons, keeping her skills sharp. She has a fine piano in her living room,but doesn't play it. She says she lacks the ability to use her feet and hands simultaneously, a rationale which eludes me, since foot work on any piano is minimal. But now, the dulcimer. She acquired a copy of the string instrument, and away she has gone, into the world of quaint instrumental folklore culture. Whether she intends to sing while playing remains a mystery. I sing. Maybe we'll end up dueting, a latter day Simon and Garfunkel on dulcimer. Ever the dutiful little bro, I have been contacting local dulcimer players in my small town rural Arkansas local community, giving them my sister's phone number with her prior permission, and imploring them to reach out, and give the kid a break. A nice lady and forty year veteran of dulcimerism has consented to contact her, and to provide a presumed pep talk. So I started thinking about stringed musical instruments generally. I recall inventing one as a child, a thing made of cardboard and rubber bands, which never went viral,strangely. In theory the number of potential stringed musical instruments is equal to the number of hydrogen atoms in the known universe. All over the world, in every culture in every continent in both hemispheres, string instruments have been being invented since antiquity. And yes, the fiddle and the violin are the same thing, one from the British Isles, the other from Italy, played in different styles. One of my heroes, David (Davy) Crockett, played the fiddle, the other, Albert Einstein, played the violen. Both played well, in my estimation, despite critiques to the contrary by upscale, self important critics. Both were self taught, and both did it just for fun, which is the best possible reason to do anything. Einstein often joined in sting quartets, and played his Mozart part passably. He once overheard a neighbor lady playing alone, invited himself over, and joined her in a duet. On another occasion, he forget to bring his lecture notes to a scheduled lecture on relativity, but he gladly informed the audience that he had not forgotten his violin, and the scheduled leture morphed into a violin concert, of Einsteinian proportions, a thing of genius, to be sure. Legend has it that nobody demanded their money back. The King of the Wild Frontier took up the fiddle to alleviate the tedium and bordeom of sitting for hours in Congress listening to speeches, waiting for his time to stand and speak his immortal words into the congressional record. "Congressman, that don't make good sense. Hell, that don't even make good nonsense." Up and dwon Pennsylvania Avenue strode he in buckskins and a coonskin cap, fulfilling expectations, fiddlin', to the delight of the inevitable mob of teenagers following him from tavern to tavern. He got in, they didn't, usually. Davy died a heroe's death at the Alamo, fiddling for his trapped brothers until the very end. I hardly expect anything so dramatic from my sister and her new dulcimer. But given enough time, I have no doubt that she'll become a passably good dulcimer player. After all, she is a pro. And, after all the investment in time and energy I have made towards her fledgling new found musical career, the least I should exect is a dulcimer concert free of charge, later, if not sooner.