Captive Audience

Well, here we are and here we'll be staying for some amount of time. My county has only had a shelter in place order for the last day, but I've pretty much been in sparkling isolation (hey, as they say, it's not quarantine unless you're in the Quarantine region of France) since last Thursday.

That was a week ago. I live alone and I'm not a very social person, so this isn't all that different from my normal behavior. I have had some evening "sit around and chill" video calls with friends, but it will be another few weeks before I run into trouble.

I haven't had the mental energy to work on editing (soon!), so I've been doing other things, such as this:

DIY coloring book

(I'm Gen X. We know how to keep ourselves entertained.)

But today I got this:

For less than $200 you can get a violin, two bows, rosin, a shoulder rest, an electronic tuner/metronome, plus an extra bridge delivered to your home. And the violin is far higher quality than the one I played during grade school. That one literally cracked lengthwise sometime around sixth grade, without noticeably affecting the sound.

Am I any good? Well... I haven't played in 37 years or so, and I wasn't all that great to begin with. So that would be a no. But I'm having fun with it because instead of trying to play something written on a page, I just put on something I listen to, like Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know", and try to hit notes that are in the right key. Sometimes they are, sometime they aren't. This is the stress-free way to play the violin.

Pity my poor neighbors though -- they can't hear what I'm playing along with, so all they're hearing is random notes played badly. And they can't leave!