The Violinist (A Voice of Our Own)

My weekly journey to Stuttgart ends late in the evening. My last class finished, I walk briskly down Koenigstrasse. Stuttgart's great shopping street is nearly empty. The locals huddle in bars to watch the Wednesday night soccer games and dart in and out of clubs like shy gophers with cigarettes. The muscles in my legs burn with the pleasure of movement that contrasts nicely to the icy central-European breeze against my face. There's freedom in walking, freedom in knowing that the street, the sneakers, the buildings standing in attention all the way were designed to parade me to the train station and take me home, where my daughter sleeps and my lover waits. I am fast, but I don't hurry; I walk in an un-lonely solitude that I experience in big cities at night. 

A line of music breaks my thoughts like an unexpected visitor. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes. That's "Time to Say Goodbye" the song Andrea Bocelli sing's in my parent's speakers and in that Italian cafe I frequented in Freiburg. It's not typical of the violinist. She usually plays songs from movies. I usually hear her play the theme from Schindler's List or "My Heart Will Go On." 

The violinist is blonde, pretty and perhaps a bit too thin. She's young - a teenager? Her hair is straight and nearly tied behind her head in a pony tail that wags in a friendly manner as she movers her bow back and forth over her instrument. She's an amateur, no question, with only the occasional evening pedestrian for an audience. I like to think that she's Russian. I don't know of course, but my prejudice says that a blond girl with a violin must be Russian. Of course, I can't tell. She could be a local. She could have been born down the street from me in the good ol' US of A. Or anywhere else, really. 

Why does she play? Need? Charity? Hope? Hopelessness? I don't know. But as I pace by, I reflect how much she's like a blogger. It's one thing to play in our bedrooms or write in our journals - little pieces of us expelled from our minds with no listener or accountability. But the street and the Internet give us a voice. Regardless of our talent or depth, we get to say something that might be heard by anyone who happens to walk by our night, our street, our website. We may dream of Carnegie Hall or The New Yorker, we may reflect on what changes in history, education or genetics might have gotten us there. But that does stop us from playing and typing, pretending and expressing, saying something that may just cut through the noise of our busy minds. 

I continue home, "Time To Say Goodbye" fading behind my right shoulder. 

Feel free to leave some change in the hat.