Battling Joshua Bell

Yesterday, I attended the Joshua Bell recital at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. The most extraordinary living violinist, it also bears noting that Bell won the Crystal Caliburn World Championship in 1996. Yes, he is a pinball wizard. And he placed 4^th in the National Tennis something or other as a teenager. Bell defines over achievement.

Joshua Bell is also a very mean man. Listening to him play the violin is a struggle and occasionally, a war. From the moment I seated myself, I felt as though I were about to engage in the Battle of the Hornburg, except the elves never show and Legolas wanders off somewhere. Bell is the antagonist, his violin the army, each note an arrow, a ladder, a spear. And there are 10,000 of him and 1 of me. I am no Aragorn. Instead, I am that little long-haired boy that has seen too few winters and doesn’t know how to wield a sword.

It might seem strange to refer to a Joshua Bell concert as a battle, but his violin is truly cruel. It will thrash you upside one movement and down the other. Throughout the duration of the recital, my body was tense, my palms sweaty, my neck stiff, and I had trouble breathing. Every angling of his wrist to lay the bow against the strings and every note that rang thereafter was an exquisite torment.

Yesterday, I passed 3 hours of my life in the most confusing state of anxiety and ecstasy. I could not release my body from the tension. I could not will myself to breathe with any sort of regularity. I could not stop my eyes from watering, and above all else, I could not help but mourn that it would be over. I would regain my agency, my breathing routine, my posture, my muscle control, my sanity. Being in front of Joshua Bell was like staring at the sun. Nothing could be more bewitching, more beautiful. Yet nothing would more certainly harm you. And then the recital ended. And even though I could breathe again, I felt utterly empty. And I yearned for the battle once more, yearned to stare at the sun and go blind.

As I stood in line, waiting my turn for a Joshua Bell signature in my program, it occurred to me that the recital was in fact a pinball game. I was the ball. Bell was the wizard. And each note he played was a vicious attack of the plunger or a flipper batting me onto a ramp and into a saucer. And each movement of Tartini, Prokofiev, Dvořák meant that I would be savagely thrust toward the target, past one way doors and ball locks. It was the most dangerous of adventures, and I was utterly helpless, at the whim of a musician who was most likely himself a slave to his own talent and skill.

I examined the wizard, sitting at the table, mechanically signing autographs for 100 after having played the violin for 3 hours. His pen-holding fingers betrayed no exhaustion, but his face was worn, his smile rote, his eyes constantly darting to the back of the line, his hand extended, shaking methodically those quivering fan-fingers. And all of a sudden, I didn’t care about the autograph. I just wanted to engage in one spontaneous moment with Joshua Bell, my integrity-filled, nemesis. And then it was my turn. I approached the table where he sat. I said, “Hi there.” He said hello and took my program. “So,” I continued. “Real tennis or Wii Tennis?” I had spoken the only words I could think of. He seemed confused and then laughed. It was an authentic chuckle. He was caught off guard. He hadn’t played Wii Tennis. I told him he would love it and took my program from him. He extended his hand, and we shook firmly. I thanked him and left. But the punishment, the resplendent castigation of his talent lingered.

Joshua Bell left lashes. And in a way that can only be characterized as sick, he ruined my life. He ruined my life in the same way that reading On Social Contract required a complete reevaluation of my mind and seeing Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstasy revealed the world as if my lids were opening for the first time. I had listened to all of Bell’s CDs, but on Sunday, I heard him breathe. I head him breathe halfway though Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80. I heard him through the microphones at Zellerbach Hall. He was desperately gasping for air, and I understood. As he played his violin, Joshua Bell stared at the sun with me.