Wednesday 6 April 2011

Dream: the unfinished violin

I'm walking into UNSW from the main entrance on Anzac Parade. As I walk down the main walkway, there are a number of stalls on the left hand side, much like the night markets or O-week activities that are often held.

One stall with lots of instruments catches my eye. It's a bit dark and there's a very tall man in front of me blocking my vision, but still I can make out a handful of mandolins. The stall owner calls out to me to ask if I'm interested in anything, and I randomly point to an instrument.

He takes it down and it's actually a nice looking violin, but it's not finished - the wood is raw and unprocessed, and the violin is not polished at all. Somehow in the dream I'm thinking the wood is probably silver beech. It feels heavy in my hands, and also a bit rough to the touch. I gasp at the price tag of $35,000 and start to hand it back to the stall owner.

"Try it, you'll love it." He says and offers me a big cardboard box full of bows which are also unfinished. I randomly pick one which looks like it's made of the same wood as the violin. The tag on it says $2,000.

In my mind I'm grumbling about how expensive this unfinished violin is, but my fingers find their way to the fingerboard and I start to play the second movement of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. The beautiful clear sound completely blows me away, and I am stunned by how wonderful this simple unfinished instrument sounds.

The lower strings are the best, but every note resonates with perfection.

The G string is dark and sombre, like an inky dark night.
The D string is deep and sonorous, like a vibrant tenor voice.
The A string is full of warmth and brightness, like the rays of the morning sun.
The E string is perfectly smooth, like running one's hands over silk.

I fall completely in love with the violin and put it all on my credit card (maybe next life I'll have such a huge credit limit...).

The next scene warps to my "home" in the dream, which is a townhouse I don't recognise. I share the place with a Japanese girl who's not there, and there are Japanese things everywhere - a kimono draped over the couch, Japanese fans on the walls, a teaset. A Caucasian girl with blonde hair and blue eyes comes into the room and brings in her laptop, on which she brings up a Chinese website for comparing violin prices.

Here I lose recollection of the dream (which is highly unusual for me as most vivid dreams are retained in their entirety in my mind). I had written "toilet rolls" as the last keyword but I cannot remember why..
 

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