As a kid growing up in east Dallas, I used to throw my old shoes under the house. That way I wouldn’t have to wear them again. I could have just thrown them away or donated them to Goodwill or something. Throwing them under the house, however, was more cathartic. It was also my private little joke. Less final, but more cathartic. I could have always retrieved those shoes if I wanted. Crawling under the house was no problem. The area under the house was made for crawling. It was and is called “the crawl space.” To this day I could go back to that house, crawl under it and retrieve my old shoes.
Visiting with Jay Rury and Duncan Beaver of Rury’s Violin Shop where I go for most of my cello tweaking, we were visiting about this and that and related nonsense then got to talking about old and new really awful instruments. Duncan said they take the bad, nonredeemable cellos and throw them on the roof. What a wonderful idea. All those cellos that should never have been made were up on the roof weathering in the sun and rain. But then Jay pointed up. I looked toward the ceiling and there were the cellos, most of them bridgeless, pegless, some even without fingerboards, a few others fully stringed. Rejects, all of them. Who would have the heart to crush them into kindling? “Hey, that’s the ceiling,” says me, “not the roof.” Whatever. So. Get over it.
Perhaps those of us who love string instruments consider each one as sacred. I don’t know. I can see that with some instruments, especially those imbued with toil (think acronym for “the one i love”), sweat, cursing, prayers and probably even a good bit of blood–and conceivably any other bodily fluid–of their makers. Instruments like those are meant to be played and cherished, handed down along a pedigree of owners and players for generations, for centuries. Even if these kinds of instruments are never played–which would be complete shame and betrayal to their existence and their creator–they remain exquisite, reason enough to preserve and protect them. No one would think of damaging one than the purely cruel and malicious. And most of them are worth too much money! But I’m not talking about the totally expensive instruments. I honestly cannot understand why some are so pricey, inferior as they are to my trusty old Juzek, to which I’ve compared dozens side by side.
Really, really awful instruments deserve no such care. Who could destroy them? Who would want to take these quasi pieces of art and crush, splinter, snap, split and break them?
I would. I would love to. I would pay money. I would document the whole thing, announcing the name of the sucky instrument’s maker, the date it was made, why it sucked and other factoids, then drop it off the tallest platform allowed, as many cameras rolling as possible, a mere twinkling of the O.J.-White-Bronco proportioned media circus, HD, 5.1 surround audio recording all nuances of each whistling f-hole, splat, boing, boing, plink, squish and bing. The thing is, the story would lie in the quantity of carnage. Not the quality. And that would get old fast, boring sooner. If the above video showed a Strad or Del Jesu or something like that, it would be viewed in the thousands or millions. It would be a crime, not a joke.
The difference between a crime and a joke is that one requires a catharsis, the other is a catharsis, the same as music, their reason for existing.
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