Personal History - A Musical Trip Through Time

What kinds of musical instruments have you learned to play?

Piano

My mother managed to get her best friend to give me piano lessons when I was a child - big mistake. Because I had to practice, and I really wasn't into this whole practicing thing. I was maybe six or seven at the time.

That was a mistake in some ways, and not a mistake in others.

It would have been so, so useful to be able to play the piano as an adult. I envy those who can.

But I still don't care to learn, so the motivation that drives the practicing just isn't there.

There have been periods of extreme stress in my life where I did practice piano as therapy - when we were homeless in Maryland and my parents were jobless, and we were trying to live in a friend's house without breaking their very nice things. They had a piano, and I had permission to play it, so I did that a lot. Learned to play some things by ear that way.

But otherwise, the piano's not for me.

Violin

In the sixth grade, I had the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, and I chose the violin. It was a very close toss between the cello and the violin, but the violin was smaller for carrying, so I went with that.

I kept that going for a couple of years, but eventually gave it up because of the frustration of tuning it, and I didn't like the high-pitched noises it made. It hurt my ears.

I should have done the cello instead.

Vocals

After violin was done, I had friends who were taking choir, and I thought to myself, I've got a fair singing voice. I can sound like those people on the radio. Think I'll try out.

I auditioned for the advanced choirs, and I got in. I got into every choir I auditioned for, until I sang in three different choirs and musical groups in high school

It was exhausting, and at the same time, very fulfilling. My favorite experience was singing with the madrigal choir at Christmastime - I adored those songs. Singing in different languages was an amazing challenge, and it felt great to try on all those different words.

I can still sing some of those songs, but I don't sing anywhere but in church anymore. I get very impatient with all the practice involved, and I have even less patience with writing music or musical theory, so anything professionally involving music is not for me.



Would you consider yourself creative?

Absolutely - I create constantly.

I write compulsively every day - it's my most common method of expression. Blogs, letters, biographies, journal entries, one really bad screenplay that became a halfway decent novel, and a bunch of short stories so far.

I can't really do anything crafty, but I can bake - pretty good at that.

Hubby and I made four kids - they're amazing. They're all very creative themselves - my oldest boy is a writer like me (a really good one). Oldest girl does terrific photography and videos. Youngest girl is a really good artist and cook, and youngest son is baking. He also gets the craziest ideas, some of which I've been able to turn into what are now some of my favorite short stories.