My Fiddle, My Friend, My Voice

Thoughts are bulging out of my head and they seem to be emerging in essay form. So: Caveat: only for those with a long attention span.

Part I Initiation and Immersion

What is fiddling? People say he or she is “just fiddling around,” meaning that someone is wasting time doing inconsequential stuff. Not busy at serious, goal-oriented pastimes. In this season of falling leaves, of trees standing naked, I feel close to the wood of my fiddle. Its grain is a kind of hieroglyph of wind and water; its glow the memory of sunshine pouring down through openings in the forest roof. I know that the work I have done in learning tradition fiddling is the result of following a strong spiritual urge to find a source. For a long time I thought that source was outside of me, but now I see it is also within me. It is a force that motivates others possessed of the similar madness.

Fiddling and traditional music in general comprise an invisible world that can only be known by devotion and perpetual practice. It is not like playing from written music, with its succinct instructions, nor is it much like performing in the symphony, led by a conductor who interprets the musical piece. In an orchestral setting, the musician is a worker under the instruction of different bosses. Ironically, this is the kind of musician most widely regarded as productive and exemplary. Many of them cannot learn strictly by ear, as traditional musicians do. Their music does not become completely internalized and must be summoned by external prompts. Not all, but many classically trained musicians rely on written music. How then, does the process of learning traditional music, of fiddling begin?

You go through a gate. As far as Irish traditional music, if you are not born in Ireland, or in an Irish community in America, where you may have been born into a family already steeped in music, the process begins randomly. It may be a traditional concert down by a lake, or a recording you hear at a party that rocks your world. For me, it was an LP played for me when I was deep in grief. The music – it was the Chieftains -- soaked into the broken place inside me, telling me that it knew me. It seemed to be speaking about what I was feeling. How did it do this? Irish traditional music is for me, and always will be, a language of the deeper life of the soul, spirit, heart: whatever words you want to use to name the currents that run through us all. There is a kind of instant attunement, not unlike falling in love.

After you enter through the gate, that initiation, there follows a long period of listening and learning. As well as yearning. Nothing will satisfy that longing except being where the music is played. Hopefully, you are able to find traditional music communities or individuals who have a repertory of tunes. It only takes two to transmit and receive the music. This period may last for decades, or a lifetime, as it has been with me. To be open, to listen, and learn – these are traits which bind us to the world in a thoughtful way in general, not just in music. During the immersion period, waves of sound wash over the consciousness, each wave focusing, illuminating, until finally a clearer picture of the tune forms and curves begins to emerge. There is something pure about this period, as one listens holistically, allowing the colors and feelings of the tunes to come in, without judging or parsing out according to one’s acquired likes and dislikes. This sensory data will continue to cling to the tunes, including time, place, people, odors, emotions, in the same process that Proust’s madeleines sent him time-tripping, and indeed to question the nature of time itself. In time, the tunes provide an inner landscape rich in imagery: a kind of bank, or inner wealth of tunes that will demand to be played.