Conduct becoming | 31 May 2008

That’s a lot of violins, I thought. Then I realised they were violas. The violins were to the left, smaller. Always smaller than I expect, violins — maybe because I wrestled with one as a child and it beat me: Tiny, pretty little things they are, with all the fleeting glamour and tyranny of a whole crowd of Hollywood starlets. Those always come up small, too.

The cellos were in their nest to the right of the violas. I don’t think there’s an instrument more beautiful to look at than the cello, all balancing curves and arches, setting off the perfect parallels and perpendiculars of the strings. The more I think about cellos, the more I want one. I’ve been meaning to get one for a while and suddenly there were a dozen at my fingertips.

Receding beyond the cellos in a tall, proud line were my people, the double basses. It’s the engine room, the bass department. I glanced over in that direction and two of them winked at me. That was encouraging. My brothers. Whatever I don’t know, which is a subject that is getting bigger all the time, I do know how to bang a bass. It used to be my job, playing the bass, in a rock’n’roll band. I never met a bass player I didn’t like either, and I allowed my gaze to rest with the basses for a moment trying to remember that I know something.

The simple geography of the string instruments, getting larger from left to right, was less confusing than I’d expected. There was a lot to take on board, though. It was hard to distinguish instantly the order in the ranks of the aerophones, the blown instruments. There was a glimpse of a bassoon poking out above a music stand.