I Do Not Welcome Exploding Bridges

A tale of three violins in nine days.

Life throws all kinds of little curveballs our way, and the best among us have strategies for dealing with them. Maybe we’re great at crafting endearingly pathetic apologies. Maybe we’re so awesome that people just chalk our fatal flaws up to membership fees for a great service. Maybe we’ve been kicked, humiliated, and shamed so many times that we developed a knack for just always being prepared. I really want to count myself in that third category, because I can believe more readily that I am hyper-competent after years of emotional battering than actually someone people want to maintain relationships with for the sake of my intrinsically valuable personhood.

Yes, I’m one of those people who takes “intimidating” as a compliment, every time. When you have perpetual chipmunk cheeks and giant, vulnerable eyes, you learn to value and envy ferocity. And, maybe because everyone just expects it from you anyway, you learn to reject asking for help or leaning on connections. You didn’t bake them five casseroles last week, so how dare you assume they’d do you a favor?

This is a story about how I did everything necessary to head off future disasters and avoid asking for help, and how I ultimately (if obliquely) needed to, anyway, because in spite of all my lofty ambitions and dreams of self-sufficiency, I am not actually “all that.” And the generous and kind people I know are, even if I didn’t bake them five casseroles last week.

Violin #1: The 1930 P.A. Johnson, St. Louis

When I was around 14, my long gibbon arms were finally ready for a full-size violin. And after working so hard and playing so consistently (and winning a few competitions that made them very proud), my parents set a budget that made me blush and we started shopping around for MY full-size violin.

My teacher, Sam, sent for four promising candidates from St. Louis. They arrived, and we took advantage of an empty auditorium to take each for a test drive. These instruments were like thoroughbreds in my skinny teenage hands, and after blind tests, with my teacher and I both putting them through their paces while my parents listened, we narrowed the contenders down to two: the French Violin, and the P.A. Johnson.

The French Violin was beautiful. It was honey-colored, and had a clear and bell-like voice. My mother really preferred that one. It was twice the price of the P.A. Johnson, and stretched the limits of my parents’ budget. But there was something scrappy and brilliant about the P.A. Johnson, darker in color and brighter in tone with every test run. It was responsive. It laughed and cried for me. It was straightforward and mysterious at the same time, complete with an enigmatic label (was it made, or merely repaired by renowned violinmaker P.A. Johnson?) In the end, down to the wire, I was in love with that violin’s sound and felt like it reflected something deep in my soul, something I hadn’t even fully discovered yet. I took it home. I took it to symphony, competitions, camp, even out on the street to busk. I took it to schools and assisted living centers. It rose to every occasion and just got better and better over time, aging like wine.

The last time my violin had a “wellness check” was in the early part of 2023. I was making sure that for an upcoming solo (Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor with the Mason Symphony), it was in tip-top shape.

The luthiers told me that the previously repaired cracks were holding solid, and that maybe in a year or so I should look at having a bridge cut to replace my old, leaning one. I indulged in rehairing the bow and a professional cleaning, and was very proud of my solo.

And then things were quiet for a bit. I had a blissful period where peace of mind reigned. My violin was a part of me like it has always been. I played weddings, funerals, and concerts with a wooden voice that has always been more my voice than my actual voice, which is nasal, poorly-regulated and gives away my autism faster than anything else. I talk, and watch people get offended or take me less seriously, in real time, every single day. That doesn’t happen when I play my violin, which is why it’s so hard for me not to not have a violin.

This winter, over many busy, cold, dry weeks, I noticed old cracks that were overall flat and unobtrusive beginning to lift and appear more dimensional. I winced, but recognized that it was time for another wellness check as soon as I could get to Ann Arbor. I chose a day, made the trek during school hours, and prepared myself for a several-hundred dollar expense.

It was so much worse than that. The luthier took a look and informed me that the top would need to be removed and three cracks would need to be repaired, to the tune of $750.

(If you need a reason to purchase a paid subscription to my Substack, please consider this a great one.)

I consider my violin a fourth child, and would obviously go into crippling debt (because I don’t have enough paid subscribers) to make sure she is in perfect health. This is necessary work to ensure the future soundness of my sound. But that means that, for the remainder of this concert cycle, I’m up a certain creek without a paddle. I might get my violin back before May 6, and I might not.

Violin #2: The Samuel Shen, model # SV 300 353 an

If you are a violinist of any moderate renown, you have a spare, which is meant to serve you for the short term in the event that your main instrument is out of commission for any length of time. This allows you to practice and attend rehearsals, teach, and play at least educational gigs without any major hiccups. While this is considered a mass-produced Chinese instrument, it’s a perfectly decent violin, and my reasoning was that as long as I had a decent-quality spare (and no solos) I would be able to skate by while my main instrument had important and necessary work done on it to ensure its long-term health. As soon as I came home from Ann Arbor bereft of my violin soulmate on Tuesday, March 4 (as soon as possible after our concert the previous Saturday) , I immediately went to fetch my Shen, which had been in storage. I determined that it would be fine, as long as I put a premium set of strings on and played the hell out of it to really put the tone through its paces and bring out its shine.

I ordered a set of my favorite strings, Eva Pirazzis. They are bright, expensive, and great for soloists (which I am in my heart, even though I play in an orchestra.) My thought was that putting beautiful soloist strings on a mediocre orchestral instrument would make a huge difference, and let’s just say that I was solidly half-right.

I’m great at replacing strings. Once, a gentleman in my orchestra asked me for help replacing a string, by which he meant his entire set of strings. I finished the whole process out for him, and tuned the violin, in around 5 minutes. I believe that in my twilight years I would like to learn to be a luthier, because I’m at-ease and feel such great comfort with a violin in my hands that I would make a pretty good one. I’m not afraid of turning pegs or testing strings. I would be a lovely, spritely old woman tempering wood and glacially melting varnish in carefully measured conditions, and welcome that eventuality and challenge.

I do not welcome exploding bridges.

On Saturday, March 8, I received my new strings in the mail and confidently took off the set the Shen already possessed. Back in May of 2023, I had asked Shar for their best cheap strings, knowing that I would not perform the Mendelssohn with this violin but still needed to practice it and hear truth in the violin’s tone. Eagerly I stripped away the past and began tuning the strings to pitch, replacing them one at a time, as one does.

I noticed the bridge was leaning. I was nervous. I persisted, because this was my spare violin, and it was only meant to get me through a couple of months at most.

Once the strings were on, I started playing scales and snatches of Bach. I also played some heavy chords, because in my experience, strings break in fastest if you stress them a bit. Pressure and volume and really pushing the limits stabilizes them really quickly.

All this to say that, even though I pulled the bridge back consistently as I tuned my Shen, it was leaning. I could see it. I had a bad feeling. And it shattered in my face under the first serious chord.

I was a street performer for roughly half of my life. A gun could go off, a car could backfire, and I would still be able to keep playing. It’s in my DNA. To my credit, I did not drop the Shen, but I’ve never had a piece of wood split in half so close to my face before. I’ve broken strings while playing, but this was a wild experience. I even wondered if I’d had a stroke, for a second. But then I realized that I was out a bridge, and started to panic about what that would mean for my role in my orchestra.

I furiously googled solutions. Supergluing the bridge was an option, but looking at the pieces and the way they leaned, and knowing the pressure of four strings bearing down, I knew it wasn’t a realistic option. This bridge was just shot. So I looked on Amazon for fast shipping and found a pre-cut bridge with good reviews. I ordered it, reasoning that it was better than nothing and that it would see me through sufficiently.

Then I picked up the Shen and heard something rattling around inside. The soundpost was down, and right then, I knew my goose was cooked.

Violins are more than boxes with strings. They are a carefully-constructed and resonant contraption that largely relies on tension to operate. The strings are literally tuned to tension. The bow is reliant on tension. Everything is a highwire act reliant on tension. So, when my bridge broke under tension, the soundpost, sandwiched inside of the violin under the bridge, was displaced.And, suddenly, I could not play my violin at all, because a downed soundpost is a certified emergency. You can’t play your violin with a downed soundpost, even if you get a new bridge. You should be blackmailing every luthier within 500 miles.

Again, this was my spare, my backup. My plan B. My ability to continue to participate in orchestra.

Violin #3: The 1500 Heirloom, Germany

On Saturday in the late afternoon, I was on hold with Shar in Ann Arbor for a full 30 minutes, hoping that someone who was in the shop past closing might pick up the phone.

They didn’t. I finally gave up, hung up, and accepted that Monday would be the earliest time I could talk to any luthier about my SPARE instrument, which doesn’t need premium service, just adequate to get me through this awkward time when I don’t have my REAL voice.

Let’s just say it was a very stressful weekend. Since I was five years old I haven’t been without a violin for this long, and my meticulous plan B, the one that relied on a spare, was shot. For the first time since I was five, I didn’t have a functional instrument of my size in my home, and it scared and humbled me. I wasn’t just your typical autist with weird needs, I was a dementia patient who couldn’t remember which letter meant “north.”

Out of desperation, I posted on Facebook, which is the social media platform that connects me with most of my musician friends and acquaintances. I wasn’t lookign for a violin; I was fully prepared and expecting to rent one. But the response overwhelmed me. Whether they were individuals willing to loan me a spare, a friend’s spare, or their own precious family heirloom, I received five offers in roughly an hour.

I responded to the first one, which occurred within minutes of my posting. An old, beloved friend from my years in the Lansing Junior Symphony reached out, saying that because of an injury she was unable to play her violin the way it deserved, and would love for me to borrow it.

I was understandably humbled and terrified, because this violin happens to be older than our country.

A violin is barely an object. It is, truly, an entity, almost a person. I fully admit that I was terrified to play her violin, and dreaded accidentally damaging it.

But. My old orchestra friend told me to embrace Marshall Music for violin repairs (which I was always warned against). It turns out there is a charming and skilled luthier, on the verge of retirement, who has a long relationship with my old orchestra friend. And bringing my spare on Monday, begging for a quick turnaround, name-dropping this wonderful friend was enough to get me same-day service.

I truly hate asking for help. And I struggle a lot when it is freely offered and someone comes through for me in the kind of situation I am hard-pressed to imagine being on the giving end of. But truthfully, my old orchestra friend with a 500-year-old beauty was the first, but not the only, one to offer a violin in my moment of need. I counted four others willing to surrender an instrument, just because I was in an awkward spot and really needed some grace, in spite of all my careful preparation.

Either I’m “all that”, or other people are gods and angels weep. Thank you so much, Michelle, Marirose, Renee, Hannah, and Beth. I know what it means to offer an instrument and will never forget your kindness and generosity.