In Music and Life, Perseverance Prevails

Former cello student, Alice Hodgkins, shares her experiences as a child growing up with music. And why persistence and discipline can lead to warmth and joy.

I remember my mother pointing out a boy playing a violin at church one Sunday and telling me I was going to play something like that, except bigger. I couldn’t quite comprehend how you could prop something much bigger under your chin, but I believed her. When I was told a few weeks later that it was time for my first cello lesson, I thundered down the stairs in excitement. I was five years old.

I’ve been taking lessons here ever since. It wasn’t always easy. In middle school, I often wanted to quit, but my mother persevered. She made me continue my lessons, join different strings groups, and even leave my much-loved school for a year to attend an arts magnet school. I didn’t understand why she kept at it so much. Cello was nice, but I would rather do other things, I told her. Anyway, I really wasn’t that good.

Finally, as I got into high school I began to understand. I would be practicing, under duress, and at the end of the piece, one of my parent’s heads would pop around the corner. “That sounded really good, Alice,” they’d tell me, and I’d know by the look of surprise that it wasn’t just obligatory parental encouragement I’d been hearing all my life. I would grin, and play the piece again.

And lately, I’ve begun to discover it also. I’ll hear a note ring or a melody build under my fingers, and I’ll realize I’m not just playing the cello anymore. My cello and I are making music.

I play at church sometimes now, and when people come up to thank me later, I know what they mean when they tell me how much they love the cello. Because, finally, I do too. I know why this was worth it to my mother. All her persistence, which I hated at the time, was a gift. Of all the melody, harmony, and resonating chords in the world, a tiny corner of it belongs to me.

I have music in my fingers, all my own, to share. Much of that is due to this place, and the people here. Kellie Burgess has been my teacher for almost thirteen years now. Since I’ve known her she’s gotten engaged, gotten married, and had two kids. Since she’s known me, I’ve, well, I’ve grown up. From five to seventeen is a long way.

There has been a lot of music, but for years now in our lessons, we talk as much as we play. She’s my friend. She puts up with my tears and lets me babysit her kids. Who could ask for better than that? Also, I love the Music Academy. It is, after my home, one of the places I feel most comfortable. It is filled with familiar faces, comfortable couches, and leaking music.

My choir teacher at school has a huge banner in the back of her room that says “Home is where your song is!” And that’s true, this is home. I just hope I can bring that song and my cello along wherever I end up next year.

Where is Alice now? A reflection of her years after MANC.

I’m now in my thirties and teaching literature to high schoolers at Caldwell Academy, a job which is consistently both chaotic and deeply satisfying. In the interim years since I wrote this first piece, I’ve been many places and done many things—undergrad in Pennsylvania, grad school in Vancouver, BC, even a precious year in the midwest working in in-home elder care, and have been writing on the side all the while. I am glad (if occasionally still surprised) to have landed back home in North Carolina. 

My thirteen years at the Music Academy were sweet in their sense of community and regularity. My parents’ commitment to my cello lessons over all that growing-up time quietly taught me that so much of what is good is gradual. My ability to play (which I still do on occasion) grew imperceptibly week to week, month to month till one day I was no longer scratching out “Twinkle-Twinkle” on a bitty eighth-size instrument but instead tackling Bach’s suites in a college concert hall.

There was no dramatic turning point at which I “got it”, though, at which I suddenly became able. It was the layers added on layers over much time that brought me to that point. This is the rhythm of most of our lives (or at least mine): faithfulness to a good thing building up in small, unspectacular ways until one day we realize that we’re surrounded by a world of riches, and have been for some time. I am grateful.

Read more of Alice's musings on her blog alicewithpaper.com