Flight Risk

The other day, I had the following conversation with an old friend, a violinist in El Paso, on her Facebook page:

Her: I'm trying to remember how to play the violin...

Me: The bow goes in the left hand, I'm almost certain.

Her: And what do I do with my right hand?

Me: Hold your beer. Duh.

This exchange is a variation on what is more or less a running joke among professional musicians - that we all stop practicing whenever we're not working for a couple of weeks and lose our ability to play. For the most part, it really is just a joke, because most of us can't afford to take an extended break from our instruments. We tote them along on vacations, family trips, cross-country drives, and squeeze in a few minutes of practice wherever we can, because you'd be amazed by how long it can take to recover, musically speaking, from even a week off.

But in recent years, the renewed emphasis on airline security has made traveling with an instrument, even one which fits in the overhead compartments, a logistical nightmare. Oboists who've forgotten to remove their reed knives from their cases face grilling by TSA flaks, string players are told our cases must be checked because they don't fit neatly into the stupid little carry-on sizing box (you can't check a string instrument, under any circumstances, because the cold baggage compartment would crack it, not to mention that any number of baggage handlers would be hurling it around like a duffel bag,) and God help the poor traveling bassoonist, whose instrument looks like nothing so much as a disassembled rocket launcher under the x-ray machine.

Every musician has at least one airport horror story, and most of us have a lot more than one. (My best one involves getting left standing on a tarmac in Detroit as my plane taxiied away without me after I refused to put my viola in the baggage compartment.) It's gotten so bad in recent years that a lot of us actually have started to leave our instruments behind when we travel, especially at peak travel times. It's an uncomfortable feeling to not have your instrument at hand for days at a time when you're used to it practically being an appendage, but increasingly, I find that I just don't have the stomach for the inevitable fights with pushy security folk, harried gate workers, and snippy flight attendants.

So when I got back from spending Christmas with family out in Portland, Oregon, I was a bit nervous about what I might have lost in the week since I'd touched my viola. I'm playing a wickedly hard piece of chamber music in a few weeks, and I'll also be playing a movement of the Mendelssohn Octet on our next Inside the Classics concert, so I can't afford to be a step slow at the moment. And even now, after three days of regular practice, I still feel the effects of having stopped cold turkey for the holiday.

But on the plus side, taking an extended break can sometimes help cure you of bad habits that had begun to creep into your playing. Because your body has forgotten whatever stresses were causing this muscle to tighten or that joint to flex the wrong way, you can start fresh, and just focus on recreating a fluid technique. So there is that silver lining.

Still, I and every other musician I know are eagerly awaiting the day when our government gets over its obsession with what one journalist recently dubbed "security theater," and once again grants my viola the hassle-free flying privileges it deserves. But I'm not holding my breath.