I started playing cello when I was 10 years old because my best friend, Anne, already had started violin and I was determined to be wedded to her side forevermore.  Not in a budding lesbian way, but in the way that young women adore each other at that age. I thought Anne was the coolest, but she also made me feel smart, safe. I felt like bad things couldn’t happen to Anne, and so staying in her orbit was simply a wise move, like not standing near flagpoles during a lightening storm.  Wherever she was, that was where I wanted to be.  So as fifth graders at Glenwood Middle School, we had to choose between band, orchestra or chorus for a mandatory two year “tour of duty”.  Anne, had already chosen orchestra, which conveniently narrowed my decision by two thirds and now I simply had to make the micro decision of “which stringed instrument?”.  I could already see that it would be hard to distinguish myself among a sea of violinists, but there were fewer cellists, thus increasing the chances that I might emerge as “special”.   Plus, cellos never had to stand,  their butts firmly married to chairs. Cello it was!  This was literally my criteria.  I wish I could tell you it was something far more magical, like “I heard the cello and instantly recognized it as my soul’s ancient, aching voice, the dialect in which my heart could speak its truest truth”.  Yeah, no, it was Anne, and being able to sit on my keister for ad infinitum.  Thanks, Anne.  Really, I’m serious.  Thanks.  It’s been the most wonderful life, and my heart has indeed spoken its truest truth and revealed its deepest yearnings many times with a cello in hand.  A terribly pragmatic and seemingly unemotional decision resulted in this wildly impractical yet fantastically fulfilling world I’ve lived in now for almost 40 years.  Sometimes the greatest romances do indeed start with friendship.

So when my great uncle Bob got the word that I was playing the cello, he had things to say.  “Tell her that she needs to be ‘hard-nosed and egotistical’!”.  Um, ok.  That seemed like kind of weird advice to give a 10 year old girl.  I should explain that my uncle (my grandmother’s brother) was himself a pretty famous cellist.  He was a prodigy, having picked up the instrument as a teenager after my grandmother refused the lessons her parents wanted her to take.  Only a few years later, in the late 1930’s, he joined the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the greatest orchestras in the world.  Growing restless after several seasons of that life, he and three other young bucks left to start a string quartet and begin an international concertizing career.  He was a BIG DEAL.  So who was I to argue with this advice?  We also shared the same birthday, 60 years apart, further substantiating the cosmic connection my mother believed existed between us.  (If only he had been dead, my mother would have eagerly believed I was his reincarnation.) Of course I would be a cellist.  It was written in the stars. And I had been given my marching orders: hard-nosed and egotistical.

I understand now what he was trying to say.  The classical music world can be a bit “dog eat dog”.  Opportunities are few and far between, and sometimes you have to don a emotional “bulletproof vest” in order to weather all the self doubt, rejection, and imposter syndrome that try to work their way into your brain. Performers are only as good as they have convinced themselves they are on any given day, and insecurity can prove deadly to career success.  Self doubt is like water that seeps into your house foundation.  It expands and contracts, causing fissures in your self esteem, weakening your logical thought and what you know to be true in the rational universe.   I have played the cello for 40 years, longer than I have done ANYTHING.  If there’s something on this planet that I come anywhere close to being an expert at, it’s playing the cello. And yet, sometimes I still get scared when I have to perform.  “I’m not sure I really know how to do this”, gurgles the fetid water in my foundation.  That’s not rational.  Of course I know how to do this.  And so, one way to combat this bullshit is to subscribe to my uncle’s advice-be hard-nosed and egotistical.  But I think we can all agree that’s not a very becoming “look” on a 10 year old girl.  While I appreciate his words, I kind of wish Uncle Bob had just said “practice your scales and arpeggios and keep your head down”.

Now around the same time, I had discovered a book in my parent’s things.  It was a volume published in 1948 called “Miss Behavior–Popularity, Poise, and Personality for the Teen-Age Girl” by Bernice Bryant.  And it was almost certainly given to my mother by my grandfather in an effort to prepare her for polite society and keep her from becoming a slut. I tell you, I was fascinated by this book.  I devoured it, as, from a sociological perspective, it was a window into less evolved times.  I felt like I had dug up a literary fossil.  But I was also genuinely curious; how does one actually morph into a lovely adult female from the awkward cello nerd I currently thought I was?  But fear not, because I was one of the lucky ones—while most of my friends were simply “winging it”,  I had excavated a map. It was a 30 year old map that had been stomped on and obliterated by the sexual revolution, civil rights and the women’s movement, but it was a map nonetheless.  Plus, I had come to grips with the fact that I liked boys, and this book practically guaranteed popularity with boys.  Here’s a sample of Ms. Bryant’s wise counsel:

“You never hear a golden-voiced tenor or a velvet-toned bass sing about the smartest girl in the world or the strongest girl in the world or the most sophisticated girl in the world. No, they tweet (how could she have seen the birth of Twitter in 1948?) about the sweet.  Thus it was, and thus it is and thus it always shall be.  Why?  Because that’s the plan of things.”

Well, crap.  Now I have a problem.  I can’t be both “hard-nosed and egotistical AND sweet”.   How would that even work?  And do I want to be a good cellist or do I want to be someone’s girlfriend?  Because judging by what Uncle Bob and Bernice have to say, it doesn’t sound like I can have both.  Can you imagine what confusing times these were for me?  Does it surprise you at all that it would be a long time before I would attain either of these goals?

Leave it to Bruce Lee to untie this mental knot for me.  He said, “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

There’s a time and a place for Uncle Bob’s advice. When I’m about to walk out on stage, that’s the ideal time to be hard-nosed and egotistical.  I need that confidence in myself, that showmanship, that unwavering belief that what I’m about to share with you is totally awesome.  But when I’m off stage and in relationship with others, that emotional flack jacket has to come off, or I’m not going to be able to relax into my fully authentic self.  My children have no use for a “hard-nosed and egotistical” mother.  So that’s a perfect example of “adapt what is useful”.  Thank you Dragon.

Now, Bernice Bryant’s advice—-that falls into he category of “reject what is useless”.  I think we can all agree that her world view depends on all men looking for the same boring thing in a woman—-ease and malleability. I feel kind of bad for all those teenage boys in 1948 who may have wanted a girl who could be an intellectual playmate, a partner, when all they had to choose from were girls who read “Miss Behavior”.  And how is anyone to successfully choose a partner anyway when we’re all learning how to be our authentic selves from imbibing the advice of others?

Which brings me to the only part of Bruce Lee’s advice that I would change. I would START  with what is specifically your own.  I would state that first. Otherwise you will be working backwards your entire life to find what that is.  Or at the very least, writing blog posts in an effort to find her. 🙂