The Cellist Who Practised in Hotels

A cellist who had, by the age of thirty-five, played in about a hundred cities, travelled with a small piece of black foam rolled up inside her suitcase. The foam was cut in a specific shape. She had cut it herself, badly, one morning in a hotel in Rotterdam. It was designed to slot between the bridge of her cello and the strings and mute the instrument almost completely, so that she could practise for two hours in a hotel room at eleven at night without any of the guests in the neighbouring rooms hearing her.

She had begun the practice at twenty-three, after a hotel guest in Prague had complained to the front desk about her playing during what was, in her defence, a perfectly reasonable afternoon. She had never wanted to be complained about again. She could have chosen instead to skip the practice on hotel nights; almost every cellist in her circle did. She had watched, over the years, what happened to those cellists' playing. Many of them, twelve years into a career, had begun to sound, on tour, like slightly tired versions of themselves.

The foam kept her, at thirty-five, sounding — even on the third night of a hard tour — exactly like herself. It was not that the muted practice was as good as playing on a proper instrument. It was that muted practice was enormously better than not practising, and, more than that, that the ritual of unpacking the foam, setting up the stand, tuning the muted strings, and playing scales for an hour in a strange room was a discipline that reminded her, every night, that she was still a working cellist and not merely a touring one.

She said, in a rare interview on the subject, that most touring musicians she knew had one of two problems. The first was the collapse of practice — the slow drift over years into performances that were only just held up by residual skill. The second, subtler problem was the loss of self: the sense, after a long tour, that one was no longer sure whether one was the person playing the concerts or an increasingly effective mimic of that person. Her nightly foam ritual, she said, addressed both, and the second more than the first.

There is a wider point here about work that is done out in the world. Every profession that involves showing up somewhere and performing — teacher, surgeon, salesperson, pastor, executive — contains a hidden second job that never appears on the schedule. It is the job of remaining, over decades, the person who is capable of the first job. The foam is different for each profession. For some, it is a morning hour of reading. For some, a Sunday walk in silence. For some, it is a specific ritual — as pointless-looking as a piece of black foam — that costs almost nothing per day and, over a career, is the difference between a musician and a mimic.

Cut yours badly, if you must. Cut it once, in a hotel room in Rotterdam, in whatever week the need first announces itself. Then carry it with you everywhere until it wears out, and cut another one. The audience will never know what it is. Your career will know.