Tell me... The Violinist's Truth

Nothing wrong...yet

Brett was not sure what he was seeing; there it was again, that strange look on Eddy's face.

What's wrong anyway?, thought Brett. But then again, he guessed he already knew. He had been ignoring it for far too long. Something within himself, something was different.

Although if he thought about it, it had always been there actually, somewhere, hidden in the deep folds of his consciousness.

He carefully raised a hand and touched Eddy's shoulder. Just very lightly, timidly.

Eddy turned towards him; his dark eyes fixed on Brett's.

"It's all right bro, you know, I'm pretty sure they'll come around again soon"

After his parents had both started getting depression phases and really just making life so much heavier than it normally had been, Eddy had spent increasingly more time at Brett's place, it was just easier this way.

The longer he stayed away from them, the easier for him.

"You know, it's really nice you're here a lot. I like spending time with you." Brett said in a warm tone.

"Bro, that's so nice of you. I really enjoy being here as well. Who knows, all those years ago, if we hadn't met, who knows where I'd be now."

"There's no way we couldn't have met" said Brett mysteriously, chuckling lightly. "One way or another, we would have ended up this way."

"I'm not sure what you mean, but I guess you're right. Probably fate leads us wherever it considers right for us, no matter the circumstances we create."

"Anyway, let's get started on our new video, shall we? Let's just see what our Ling Ling wannabes have thought up this time." Brett grinned, opening the laptop.

They sat down together the way they usually did, Eddie on the right, Brett on the left, the large curtain-covered window behind them. Brett adjusted one of the grey square pieces of canvas that decorated the wall to his left.

"Okay, here we go." he turned on the camera.

*****

"That was nice", said Eddy an hour later as he took his violin from the case.

Brett nodded and began winding his bow. "It's pretty cool there are so many of us now. I think we really are making a change, you know. Bro, when we started out 6 years ago, no one would have thought we'd be starting such a large community."

"Well, speaking of large community, you'd better start reviewing your Tchaikovsky" grinned Eddy.

Brett groaned.

"Yeah, I know."
The "yeah" was so long while he said the "I know" rather quickly. It was obvious he had been procrastinating on it a little bit.

"You know, I already practiced the whole Sibelius concerto again, but let's try yours together, then."

"Wait, can I play for you the first movement before we start?"

"Sure." Eddy sat down in the soft black armchair in the corner and waited for Brett to finish tuning.

"How about I play the last four bars of the orchestra part and then you start", suggested Eddy, seeing the hint of indecisiveness in his friend's eyes.

"Okay."

As Eddy llistened, he watched his friend more closely. He looked fit, more sporty than usual and the rings under his eyes were gone.

The music filled the entire room. Eddy was proud of how Brett had improved on projecting his sound (and that is, himself as well) to a large audience. Even if it was just the living room and not a large concert hall, Eddy had always tried to help him improve on creating a more confident, massive sound even during soft parts of a piece.

His friend's smooth up and down bow strokes were really somewhat interesting to watch, so Eddy thought. Or maybe that was not the right word. Exciting, perhaps?

Anyway, he continued to focus on the piece and turned his attention back to smaller details in phrasing and style.

Some small passages here and there were slightly out of tune, but he was keeping the tempo rather consistent and the high notes came out very nicely.

"Pretty cool bro, not bad", he said and pointed out the passages he had noticed Brett could practice a bit more, explaining what he would change here or there.

"And your fingering over here in this bar, why do you shift on the a-string here? I mean, you can just play the whole thing in third position, like one, three, one, two, four", he demonstrated what he meant, "I always play it like this."

"I don't know why I dind't think of that, it's actually much easier." Brett shook his head as he erased the previous numbers with the other end of his pencil and replaced them with the ones Eddy had suggested to him.

He tried the passage again. "Cool."

"Sounds great. So, shall we try it together? Wait, let me just get the other music stand, it's got to be somewhere..."

"It's still in the bedroom, I think, from when we did the other video. No one picked it up", called Brett after him as Eddy left the room.

"Got it!" came a shout from above half a minute later.

Brett grinned. Hadn't been that hard to find.

The sheet music was opened and they took the first breath together, as they always did when playing duets.

The beginning went very smoothly, but then at some point Eddy noticed Brett rushing a little bit on that higher sequence, a very rewarding, but technically complicated passage.

Just for fun, he started rushing as well, overdoing it on purpose. Soon enough, Brett was grinning too, and they got to the end of the third page at twice the normal speed.

Brett burst out laughing. "Bro, what the hell?"

"You were rushing, man, over here" Eddy indicated the passage "I was like, hey where  are you going?"

"Sorry," Brett was still laughing. "I've never done that much of a Tchaikovsky race before, though."

Eddy's smile broadened, slightly parting his lips.