course, we’re proud of what you’re achieved with the violin. It’s almost a miracle, the way you’ve come on so quickly. But we’d be proud of you in any case. You don’t have to prove anything. Not ever. So all I’m saying is that music’s fine, but that it would be useful to have another plan as well.”
I snapped, “I don’t need any other plans,” and turned up Heifetz on my Seashell.
I must, by any standards, have made an alarming and irritating figure as I strode about inside my arrogant, self-absorbed bubble. At school, and at music seminars and classes, I kept my head high, my gaze unfocussed, my thoughts to myself. I’d probably have been a candidate for bullying if I’d have responded in the slightest to the stuck-up Paki-girl taunts which sometimes wafted in my direction. But I didn’t. I was, I was sure by now, destined for higher things.
Good was nothing . Good simply wasn’t good enough. At night, my hands raw and aching after the four or five hours’ hard private practise I now generally managed to put in at the end of the day, my head simply wouldn’t switch off as I finally lay stunned and exhausted in my bed. I didn’t even find the loss of sleep and rest frustrating. Yes, it was abnormal, as I’d heard Gran Maitland and Nan Ashar privately whispering, and yes I was straining myself up to and beyond the limit. But why should I want to be normal? Weren’t the limits of so-called normality simply barriers to be broken through by people like me?
Amid those fatigue-flickering nights, in the TV-less quiet, amid the occasional sighs and stirrings from the far bedroom where my parents battled their dreams, amid the growl of the wind, and the blare of car horns and the mutter of police helicopters and the swish of the rain, many ghosts reached out to me. First came my warmest allies, my closest friends, Heifetz and Pearlman and Mar and Menuhin, and of course Barbirolli and Karajan and all the great composers, their cheeks gaunt, their eyes hollow with the pallor of grief and pain. It’s alright , they would whisper. We have been with you in this place. Feel, listen—we understand. The deader they were, the better. I could barely bring myself to listen to performances given by anyone living. There was Mahler and there was Tartini, as well, and Paganini, and Chopin and Liszt…Wild-haired misshapen romantics all, and to me impossibly glamorous. What would you give? they always wanted to know. And I’d mew in my roiled sheets on those hot, freezing nights and I’d spread my arms and I’d tell them that I would give everything, and still it would never be enough. No, no, no, no, they would mutter and laugh as they filled up the shadows and crawled out from under their posters and dripped with the rain and crammed aside what else was left of my thoughts. You don’t understand, Roushana. Everything is nothing. There has to be more…
I was exhilarated. I was terrified. My skin crawled. I drove myself so hard and did without sleep and ignored my mother’s occasional pleadings. This isn’t the only thing in life, Roushana. You’re over-stretched. How stupidly wrong could she be! Of course it was the only thing! I wanted to be stretched so far that I snapped into disparate pieces and then to examine my flayed body and find out what those pieces were, and what lay beyond. That might get rid of this curse of being merely good. That, at last, might be something. The swaying figures surrounded me. I was touched by gaunt fingers. I felt their hollowed breath. I shared the fatigue of centuries. On summer nights, as barricades went up and the helicopters flickered closer and cars were rolled and the flaming streets of Balsall Heath played orange across thunderous skies, I breathed the acrid smoke of funeral pyres. When the rains raged and the gutters giggled like gargoyles and fish-condoms swam in the streets, my teeth were gritted with the soils of the grave. On broken-glass mornings, exhausted
I snapped, “I don’t need any other plans,” and turned up Heifetz on my Seashell.
I must, by any standards, have made an alarming and irritating figure as I strode about inside my arrogant, self-absorbed bubble. At school, and at music seminars and classes, I kept my head high, my gaze unfocussed, my thoughts to myself. I’d probably have been a candidate for bullying if I’d have responded in the slightest to the stuck-up Paki-girl taunts which sometimes wafted in my direction. But I didn’t. I was, I was sure by now, destined for higher things.
Good was nothing . Good simply wasn’t good enough. At night, my hands raw and aching after the four or five hours’ hard private practise I now generally managed to put in at the end of the day, my head simply wouldn’t switch off as I finally lay stunned and exhausted in my bed. I didn’t even find the loss of sleep and rest frustrating. Yes, it was abnormal, as I’d heard Gran Maitland and Nan Ashar privately whispering, and yes I was straining myself up to and beyond the limit. But why should I want to be normal? Weren’t the limits of so-called normality simply barriers to be broken through by people like me?
Amid those fatigue-flickering nights, in the TV-less quiet, amid the occasional sighs and stirrings from the far bedroom where my parents battled their dreams, amid the growl of the wind, and the blare of car horns and the mutter of police helicopters and the swish of the rain, many ghosts reached out to me. First came my warmest allies, my closest friends, Heifetz and Pearlman and Mar and Menuhin, and of course Barbirolli and Karajan and all the great composers, their cheeks gaunt, their eyes hollow with the pallor of grief and pain. It’s alright , they would whisper. We have been with you in this place. Feel, listen—we understand. The deader they were, the better. I could barely bring myself to listen to performances given by anyone living. There was Mahler and there was Tartini, as well, and Paganini, and Chopin and Liszt…Wild-haired misshapen romantics all, and to me impossibly glamorous. What would you give? they always wanted to know. And I’d mew in my roiled sheets on those hot, freezing nights and I’d spread my arms and I’d tell them that I would give everything, and still it would never be enough. No, no, no, no, they would mutter and laugh as they filled up the shadows and crawled out from under their posters and dripped with the rain and crammed aside what else was left of my thoughts. You don’t understand, Roushana. Everything is nothing. There has to be more…
I was exhilarated. I was terrified. My skin crawled. I drove myself so hard and did without sleep and ignored my mother’s occasional pleadings. This isn’t the only thing in life, Roushana. You’re over-stretched. How stupidly wrong could she be! Of course it was the only thing! I wanted to be stretched so far that I snapped into disparate pieces and then to examine my flayed body and find out what those pieces were, and what lay beyond. That might get rid of this curse of being merely good. That, at last, might be something. The swaying figures surrounded me. I was touched by gaunt fingers. I felt their hollowed breath. I shared the fatigue of centuries. On summer nights, as barricades went up and the helicopters flickered closer and cars were rolled and the flaming streets of Balsall Heath played orange across thunderous skies, I breathed the acrid smoke of funeral pyres. When the rains raged and the gutters giggled like gargoyles and fish-condoms swam in the streets, my teeth were gritted with the soils of the grave. On broken-glass mornings, exhausted
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