Not see, but feel (New Edition)

Essay #1

 “I’m sorry teacher, but I think I need to take some rest. There’s a problem in my eyes; I feel dizzy.”

Every single time I took the violin lessons during the middle school life, I had to stop playing in the middle of a piece of music and ask permission from my violin teacher to let my eyes rest, since sudden yet long lasting pain came from my eyes, which was otherwise irremovable. As I concentrated more into my violin and the music that came out of it-the process of presenting myself through the music, my eyes resisted to my brain’s control more fiercely and gave me an unbearable nausea by randomly overlapping the entire image I saw through my eyes. Upon the scores of the right side suddenly appeared the scores of left side, even upside down or twisted 50 degrees, making what I saw totally mixed up. My brain, so surprisingly, came up with a strong talent in making surreal and messy images even better than artists such as Rene Magritte could. This bizarre phenomenon of 3D image converting always interrupted the practice. The recurrent symptom of incurable lightheadedness broke into the gradual progression of falling into innermost part of my true ego. 

That I had to quit practicing playing violin every single time because of the unceasing pain made me consider giving up playing violin. Even the medicine and treatments prescribed by the doctor, which were the only hope I could look for, virtually had no effect; it appeared that at the dead end of my effort was the only choice of giving up-until I kept opening my eyes

“May I ask you a single question?”

“Yes, you may.”

“Can you tell us the reason why you close your eyes when you play the violin? It’s quite unique.”

“Hmm…. It’s because I don’t have to see what I do; I can just feel it.”

Walking out of the audition room, I totally forgot how I performed the notes I’d practiced for more than 2 months. My regret was no longer about the quality of music nor about the admission; it was solely about the bold, inexplicably bizarre answer that smeared out from my mouth. At the bus of returning home, I kept thinking how I could have responded better to that question. Several possible answers that could have made me look better, pondering about them made me feel even more desolate. However, it was very true that those other fancy sounding answers weren’t true. The only genuine answer to that question was to say that “I can just feel it.”

Disability in sensual organs makes people with such problem elevate their sensitivity of other organs so that they could compensate one loss. To me, the problem in my eyes, which had to be kept closed, worked just the same way. I can’t play a whole piece of music with my eyes opened. The death sentence of my visual sense was just the same as the loss of gustatory sense of a cook. The disability stood right middle in the road of my life as if it were being pretentious about its pressing magnitude. Even with passionate love toward my violin, such disability took much of my will power away. However, facing the dead end, I found a long and rough yet the only possible detour: Closing my eyes. This was the only way possible.

From the moment of enlightenment was the whole process of practice changed. The pieces of paper with millions of scores no longer showed up on my music-stand; they rather remained in the bookshelf for indirect reference only. The very first and the most essential process was no longer seeing but listening. I listened to the music I longed to play until I could totally memorize it. It took a lot of time to memorize every single note, but it was all worth it. After full memorization, then I started to practice. With my eyes firmly closed, I spent 10 seconds before starting the music so that I could feel my soul reaching my fingers. Then, my fingers, my body, my brain, and my soul, all of them united, never stopped until the music ended and I opened my eye. “I don’t have to see it; I can just feel it.”