I think I know what causes dementia. Ok... that is pretty bold, let me back up. What if what we are looking at, well... we are not really looking at it. Its just in our path of vision but our brain is somewhere else. What if I did that enough times over a number of years. What if most things I was looking at, I didn't really need my brain for because I wasn't really taking them in, I wasn't really seeing them. My brain would just decide it was wasn't needed anymore right? Like an athlete who stops training, when you stop using muscles that were used for a special task. They atrophy. Just like when you stop playing a musical instrument, your muscles atrophy. I realize I have been doing this to my brain for quite a long time. It is starting to wake up though. For real.
Not matter how many years go by, no matter how many times it happens I always have these begin again moments, these coming out of atrophy moments. Epiphanies, sparks of light and cello truth. I realize each time that I have never been listening, I have never really been in touch with the cello.
At middle age I wonder what my future will be like, if my mind will survive old age and is there anything I am doing now to bring on my impending doom. I have had this theory that watching too much TV in middle to old age could cause dementia. I know, I am neither a scientist or a medical professional. I just like to hypothesize and theorize. Then tonight I was practicing and I realized it is not the TV watching is the way the TV gets watched. It's the way any a number of things get watched or done that really matters.
The bad way, they way I have been doing it most of my life is to be away, not really far away like somewhere else in a day dream but just away, just far enough away to not be in that moment. I play away from the cello, I contort my back, tense up my neck. I chew, I don't even know how to feel what my hands and fingers are doing because when I imagine them it is impossible to imagine them correctly. Until now. Until now I have done these things and now I have had a glimpse into a different way.
We all think we are listening. We all thing we are thinking about things correctly. Listening is not black and white. Thinking about cello certainly isn't black and white. To me now it feels like everything is pulling down and to the right instead of up and to the left. The tension is leaving me and giving way to music. I am more settled. I care more about the sound and here is the clif hanger.... when I am done practicing the cello actually looks different. It has more meaning a deeper meaning, it all of a suddens look like an instrument of sound and not just a "Cello". I am not sure how to describe it except that. The cello looks and feels different to me after practicing this way, the more correct way, the better more musical more in touch with the sound way. So what was I doing before? What was the cello to me before tonight? I thought I was using it correctly? I thought that I was thinking about everything correctly.
It was not so. It was wrong, it was all wrong.
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