The Contradictions of it all.

This is something that I wrote two years ago - in recent times I have had some happier experiences as a performer and as a teacher, but this was relevant at the time, and so I am publishing it anyway.

“Music education is so important for children,” I say, putting as much conviction into my voice as I can. “It helps in so many ways - to develop the brain, to develop self expression, it can even help children with their maths!”

Ben's mother nods and smiles, her eyes tired and rather desperate as she looks at her son, who is attacking the music stand with his violin bow, à la Jack Sparrow. I must sound convincing, because I can tell that she's beginning to think that yes, maybe it is worth plodding on then - maybe it is worth the fights to get him to stand his testosterone-fizzing body still, for ten minutes three times a week with a violin clamped under his chin - maybe it is worth the money she pays to bring him for his lessons every week, worth the trauma of listening to him whine and squirm the notes out of his small, factory made instrument.

I feel a worm of guilt wriggle in my stomach. Should I have my fingers crossed behind my back, when I spout this “music teacher” talk?

Should I tell her about my performance on Saturday evening? Does she really need to know? Does she need to know how I, a grown woman with three teenage children, the product of so many music lessons, spent all Saturday in a cold sweat, my fingers shaking, the vomit churning at the bottom of my throat - just because I had to perform a Bach solo that I love? Would it help her to know how I washed down my beta-blockers with a glass of wine before the performance – and how all I wanted to do, in the hours leading up to it, was to leave my children and husband of twenty years and run away to Peru? Does she need to know about the humiliation, the great feeling of worthlessness that drained me, the next day, because, even after the wine and the beta-blockers, my hands shook so much that the bow felt as though it had shrunk to the size of a pencil and spent the entire piece bouncing up and down like a rubber ball on the strings?

No, of course she doesn't need to know about those things. Instead, I tell her about those times when I was a child and fell in love with music – the times I will never forget. The Wednesday evenings in Saudi Arabia, when my father would load four of his six daughters into our rusting Chevrolet and we would ride through the dusking city, through the blare and snort and fart of Riyadh traffic, past the flashing neon signs and the feathery palm trees, the high rises and the mud houses. We would drive right to the edge of the city, where concrete melted into sand and rock and you could look out for miles across flat and empty desert, to where the sun was sinking in a welter of dusty pink glory. And there would be our friends, Ruth and Erasmus, middle aged doctors with grown up children, who would welcome us into their house with beaming smiles, would ply us with tea and orange juice and sticky cakes from French Corner, filled with custard and fruit. Malcolm would be there as well - fierce, eagle eyed Malcolm who, in his youth, had played with the great recorder players of Europe and Knew His Stuff. We would sit in a circle, in the orange light of the lamps and put up our music stands, take out our recorders and open up the boxes of music that stood in the centre of the room.

We never knew what was going to come out of those boxes – whether it would be music by Telemann, or Purcell, or Bach, or Schickhardt or Loeillet. Sometimes it would be music we had played before, but more often than not, it wasn't. Ruth would hand out our parts and we would open them up, see the squiggles on the page – flat instructions, printed black on white. And then we would begin to play, Erasmus on the guitar – pretending it was a lute - his eyebrows disappearing into his hair as he peered at the music over the top of his glasses; Ruth with her fat, sausage fingers sticking out high over the holes of her recorder, so that she was always a quaver behind the rest of us, her soft grey hair, loosening from its bun and waving around her round, sparkling eyes; Malcolm, his breath rasping from his nostrils into his beard, stamping with a desperate foot and wagging his recorder up and down in an attempt to keep us all together; my sisters and I, our cheeks flushed, all bright eyed with eagerness.

Sometimes the music was pretty, sometimes, it was lovely, but sometimes, it would spark and catch and lift off the page and it was as though a time warp had opened up between this concrete house in Saudi Arabia and the Europe of past centuries, the music redolent of old stone churches, organs and choirs. Sometimes it was music that was rich with the extravagance of marble floored dance halls, gold trimmed cherubs singing from pink-cloud ceilings – or sometimes it was music which smelled of beer and roared with the life of Bruegel-busy taverns. Our hearts would race, any evening fatigue would vanish and when we had finished it was: “Let's play that again – please can we play it again!” till late in the evening.

This is what I tell Ben's mother. About the times when music turns into a magic gift of creation across time and centuries and people of different ages.

“You're so lucky!” Ben's mother exclaims. “You must have had the most amazing experiences.”

And I nod and smile again, “Yes,” I say. “I am very lucky.”

I don't tell tell her about the years at music college where I learnt that my worth as a human being was in direct proportion to my worth as a musician. I do not tell her about the years of practising in practise rooms with the light switched off, or up in the towers behind the organs where no one could see me, terrified that someone would discover that I had only just started learning my Tchaikovsky, or that I had not yet perfected my Bach, or that my scales were not as well in tune as they ought to be.

I tell her, instead, about sitting on stage with tiger cubs, acrobats swinging overhead, the most famous stars in the land singing and dancing beside me. I tell her of the camaraderie of the orchestra pit, the crosswords and knitting, the book clubs and jokes that form over a season. I don't tell her how quickly that camaraderie can fade, once the season is over. How colleagues that have shared a desk with me, every night over the course of six weeks, can come to return a greeting with glassy eyed indifference, mere weeks later. I don't tell her how, when working with other musicians, you come to expect the jealousy, the bitchy rumours, the snide comments.

“I wish I could have been talented enough to be a professional musician,” Ben's mother says and her eyes are wistful as she watches her son fold his music into an aeroplane and send it shooting at the neighbour’s cat. “It must be so wonderful to do something you love. When I came to your last concert and heard you play, I could just see how much you love it!”

Again, I nod and smile and think back to the week before that concert - how I had been counting down the days: “a week and it'll all be over...three more days and it'll all be over...two more hours and it'll all be over...two more pages....three more lines....two more bars....” how I had looked out over the happy, applauding audience and wondered why, at the age of forty-one, I was still putting myself through all this.

I tell her instead, about playing sonatas with my pianist, the excitement of trying different interpretations; trying this passage a tad slower, or maybe that one much faster – the process of searching for the door into the music – the magic of discovering that you're there! This is it - this is how it's meant to go!

I tell her about playing Elgar - those moments when I feel as though I can see right into his soul and my own heart breaks with the music, but is filled, at the same time, with the rushing thrill of it.

“Well, we'll persevere,” Ben's Mum says, eyeing her son as he throws his violin into its case and slams the lid on it, as though trapping a wild animal. “I'm sure it will be worth it in the end.”

And I bite my lip and smile and the worms of guilt dance a jig in my stomach.

After Ben's Mum has gone, I sit for a while and wonder: why didn't I tell her all those things?

Was it just because I need the income from Ben's lessons? Is the income from Ben's lessons, come to that, really worth the hours I have spent, listening to his squalling attempts to ring a tune out of the violin, trying to persuade him that he really does have to take his violin out of its case and at least look at it, between lessons?

No, it is nothing to do with income. It is because, in spite of everything – in spite of the fact that I probably have a stomach ulcer the size of Japan, in spite of all the tears I have shed over the years, the fact that I know I will always feel like a failure, always feel as though I have missed something, never feel as though I am worth anything as a musician; in spite of the fact that I know it will not get any better – in spite of all this, I know that Ben's mother is right.

I am lucky. I love what I do and I do not regret a single moment of my life as a musician.