In The Doldrums

"depressed, dull and listless" Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer

Often, I'm in the doldrums for no particular reason. "In the doldrums" is a phrase that refers to boredrom as described the lack to tumultuous weather in a region (the doldrums) near the equator that has very mild winds and tides, hencing being slightly boring to meteorologists. But, how does boredom come about?

For about 10 years, I had a routine. Every day, after school and before dinner, I would practice on my flute for anywhere from 1 to 3 hours. But, all the sudden I stopped. Perhaps it's the deluge of other things going on in life, but this doesn't seem to be the case because, on impulse, I bought a violin and started to learn how to play. It appears that I simply got weary of playing the flute.

It seems a waste of 10 years of practice, but there are a few things I've discovered because of it. One: musical skill is somewhat universal because learning to play the violin turned out to be easy, even without a teacher. Two: when you get to a certain level of finesse, it's easy to get bored because it's harder to improve. This is true in other things as well. For runners and swimmer, it's particularly difficult to loose that 1 crucial second when you already run or swim very fast. It's the same with music. When you reach a certain level of playing, there's a sort of dilemma. Option A: you could continue to play at the same level, but this won't bring you to the next level and sooner or later, since you're not improving, your skill deteriorates. Option B: you could try the next level, but this is generally very difficult and will require much more time that option A. To give an idea to how much more time, I'll note that most of the pieces I was looking to play in option B take over half an hour to play. Assuming that it takes 30 minutes to warm up and 30 minutes for exercises, and that you should play a piece at least 3-4 times, the practice should be at least 2.5 to 3 hours of practice. No one really has 3 hours to dedicate to a hobby per day. Besides, this kind of practice time is not reasonable for health reasons (repetitive strain is hard to heal), despite all the stories about the composer who grew up with a mother who practiced violin 6 hours a day. (Yes, very excessive.)

I'll add a disclaimer here that this is never a problem for a serious musical genius, who would, of course, bypass both options by having genetically-inherited strongly-built hands (hence the ability to practice for 6 hours a day), love of music (hence able to endure to listen to him/herself play for 6 hours a day, but this is rarely the problem), and the brilliance to learn very fast (hence no need to practice for 6 hours a day).

So, clearly, to avoid this kind of no-win dilemma with options A and B, I subconsciously opted for option C, which was to play violin. Is this really the result of boredom, as it seems? Perhaps, it's a different thing altogether. Perhaps it's the thrall of new challenges and new sounds. After all, boredom is not very strong; it doesn't drive revolutions or revelations.