Musician’s Focal Dystonia
By Joanna White
It’s the voice of that person
comes through the instrument.
Franz Welser-Möst
When dystonia scrambled my brain signals like a virus
corrupts a hard drive, I was sure I could not spend ten thousand
hours retraining my brain to play the flute a new way,
but when I heard that a luthier and his son restored the holocaust
violins to free their lost voices, I changed my mind. If I
am silenced, you would not miss me but the way my vibrato,
on the first C# of L’Apres Midi d’un Faun, conjures up
a sultry summer afternoon, the way your hips swing when I play
a tango, the way you hear whales when I close my lips
around the mouthpiece to hum Voice of the Whale. The original
ten thousand hours, I will tick in reverse, a feat as tricky
as learning to ride a backward bicycle, until once again I can curve
quiet fingers over the keys, whistle my lips to laser the tone
down the silver tube, your body ringing in sympathetic vibration.
