Just a beautiful dusk-evening photo I happened upon when leaving a building this week.

A Voice in Those Strings

Adminisk8or

09/10/2023

Have you ever experience the onosecond? It's the second that YouTuber Tom Scott describes as the second after you make a terrible mistake and realize there's nothing you can do about it. I had that second this week.

Granted, in this scenario, the stakes were not terribly high, like in other times I've experienced it. This time, I was at my office comptuer, as I often am, and I was going through some old SD cards and wiping them to make them ready for easy use. I use Linux Mint for my desktop, and as I was doing this, I though I had plugged one of the SD cards in, when I started deleting the partitions. I successfully deleted the first partition, but was confused why I couldn't delete the second one. And then it happened- the onosecond. I had just deleted my EFI partition for that disk. Oops.

So yeah, that made me feel like a class A rookie. But one backup and reinstall later, it was all fine. Shoutout to Aptik for being great software! A lot of my personal time this week was actually spent in search of the imaginary: an open-source VM hypervisor that A) is free or low cost (and has transparent pricing), B) doesn't require intermediate knowledge of programming to use, and C) can do backups. Between NCP-ng and Proxmox, I came so close to finding this! But unfortunately, not so. Perhaps one day we'll see a true, free or cheap open-source virtualization platform that can perform automatic backups arise. One day.

But the best moment of this week was not related to technology, no. This evening, I found myself going to an interfaith concert with my wife on a double date. There were some impressive performances there. This vocal duo who was popular online and were the hosts were... good. There was a Thai dancer group was good. There were Buddhist Taiko drummers who were AMAZING. There was a gospel choir who was really good, and a gospel soloist who was great! There was a Bell Choir whose sound was pure and beautiful! There was an organist I'd heard before who was PHENOMENAL! But to my surprise, the one I thought topped them all was none other than a Jewish violin soloist. This man got up and played his one piece, and it was just a violin solo- no other instruments or voices. But the way he played that violin goes beyond description and ability to convey emotion.

To put it in the best words I can, it was as if that violin was his voice- a voice that could speak in a tongue you've never heard, but can somehow understand very well. And that voice was crying a beautiful and eloquent albeit simple prayer to God- perhaps in a style somewhat similar to the psalms of old, but even then, it felt so much more real and heartfelt. I don't know why this one violinist got me the way he did, but MAN. He really poured out his soul through those strings, and I hung on every note.

I guess it just goes to show, that sometimes the best fiddlers aren't found on the roof! Indeed this fine nobody I'd ever heard of was, in my eyes, the star of the show tonight- and this on just one small instrument! True, the beautiful tones of the organ swayed me as they are wanton to do; the rhythm and sensation of those Taiko drums moved through me like an adventure beyond description- but the simple and slow strings of this performer spoke to me on a whole other level. I'd go on about how sometimes all it takes is one simple instrument instead of a full orchestra to move a person, but I think I've made my point enough as is.

And I belive everyone has their voice in this world! For this man, it seems clear that it's his violin. For me... well, maybe it's technology, maybe it's my singing, maybe it's this blog (as if)- who knows. But you have a voice, and it is a very precious one. I don't think Paul was mistaken when he said "There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification." If you feel like you haven't found yours, I pray you do, one day soon!

And until then, keep on keepin' on. Until next time, see ya!