How Music Helps Me Hope (Not Just Cope)

I rarely ever turn on the radio, especially the week before or after an orchestra concert. My favorite parts of symphonies are almost always playing in my head and keeping my mind company during those days.

Last week, I got to perform in one of my most favorite orchestra programs to-date: Glinka's Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla, Beethoven's fifth symphony, and Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony. It was a jackpot set for the cello section--lots of gorgeous melodic lines and exciting roles in harmonic structure.

This concert also felt significant to me because it was a reminder of how far I've been able to progress musically. I played Russlan and Ludmilla way back in either 8th or 9th grade district orchestra--I don't think I actually played very many of the notes and it just generally felt like an impossible piece of music to me at the time. Beethoven's fifth symphony hit me a couple of times in college--the (in)famous second movement was part of the excerpt list for my first orchestra audition. I lived and breathed that piece the summer before, struggling to learn the challenging notes and rhythms. Then I got to the play all four movements with the UI Symphony Orchestra in a concert a couple of years later, still struggling some, but having several victorious moments, as well.

While I can't say my personal performance with the Loveland Orchestra was 100% perfection last Friday, I can say it was my best one by far. Not only did I play more accurately than I have in the past, there were plenty of transcendent moments during the performance where it felt like my soul was somehow singing through the cello and participating in the rebirth of a masterpiece. I've never been more grateful for ten intact fingers and two functional eardrums.

I believe that at some point after I die, my spirit will be reunited with my renewed and perfected body in an event called resurrection. My days as a ghost will be over, as well as many of the afflictions of mortality. I will have those eardrums back, and all ten fingers, too.

Although I don't fully understand how this process will take place, I still believe. And this belief gives me hope.

For me, there are some tactile moments in life that seem to connect me briefly to heaven and divinity. Holding my newborn child. An embrace. Singing a hymn in church. Playing my cello in a symphony. Things I couldn't do if I didn't have a body. The thought that these types of tangible moments can somehow exist in eternity feels right to me, and that is what I choose to believe. I believe that there is more to our existence than mortality, but also that some of those precious moments we experience during mortality can be ours forever.

I'm not sure what cellos look like in heaven, but maybe if I keep practicing, I'll be able to play one someday.

(Photos by Jenika McDavitt)