To Love Oneself

As the train approached the station, Emma Pullard sighed with relief, she was finally home. It didn’t matter that all she knew about her new home she had read in books. None of these books talked about her home in our modern time. Modern literature lacks. She simply decided so and once decided, no one can change Emma’s mind but Emma herself. A classical Pullard trait. 

She stood up and picked up her pink violin case to carry it behind her back. She examined reflective surfaces around her to admire how cute she looked with the flashy case hanging behind her back. She purposely had the straps an inch or two longer than should be so the instrument would sit on her round behind. She neither had the physique nor the confidence to flaunt her body in front of everyone, but she knew and liked how admirable her behind was. Another Pullard characteristic. 

Emma dragged her suitcase behind her and stepped out of the train. Gare du Nord didn’t look much different from Waterloo station. Trains and platforms, shops and cafes, stacked screens with timetables and many people going in different directions. This is not intimidating at all, Huzzah! A false sense of security arising from a deceiving sense of familiarity. I’ve got this, Emma murmured to herself. A sensical interjection amidst the consistent, elaborate, nonsensical dialogue that ran in her mind. I can’t help that my mind is so interesting. She had the rest of the day to find her way around Paris before her audition the following day. As for discovering her new home, she had a lifetime to explore it. What mattered to her was to love her new home which she already did a while back. 

From the wizardry of Paganini to the heart-wrenching vibratos of John Williams. Not Classical, nor Jazz, and not even Honky Tonk stretched the boundaries of her mastery of the instrument. The instrument was an extension of her. The only part of her she knew the world could understand and appreciate. Not a single part of Emma worried she wouldn’t get the job, not from an unjustifiable self-confidence, nor was it from a detachment of the potential outcome of the audition. Her active mind was busy planning her new fabulous life in her chosen home. She knew she wouldn’t be back. She knew that Yorkshire was a distant history from that point onwards. Now that I’m French, I think I should drop the d from my last name, and while I’m at it, I can change the 'u' to an 'o', Pollar sounds far more elegant. I’m glad we got that out of the way. 

I thought she would miss it, but she said she wouldn’t. I pressed her. Maybe the walks in nature, the small villages and quaint pubs. Most certainly the Yorkshire Terriers, but then the French are cultured people, there must be many of my beloved breed in Paris. “What about your family?” I asked. Of course, I will miss them, but then France is not all that far from England. London may be close to France, but Yorkshire couldn’t be further. Is it really that far or did she choose to believe that? As far as Emma was concerned, the channel that separated her native country from what was to become her adopted country was a black hole only she could cross. Another outrageous notion she added to her endless list of outrageous beliefs. It’s not like anyone needed to know about my alternate reality. I’m a musician, and we’re odd that way.

The truth is while Emma is real in every sense of the word, she’s also a figment of her own imagination. She isn’t a person as much as she is a caricature of someone. A delightful one, obviously. No one knows where that someone originated from, nor her or his whereabouts. “This can’t be you for real, now is it? You can’t possibly have achieved this degree of advanced eccentricity at such a young age!” I can’t be eccentric. I have read every book there is on how to be a person. How to Be a Person, How to Be Human, How to Love and Be Loved and my personal favourite, An Idiot’s Guide to Being Average. I spent endless hours practising with Mephistopheles. 

I’m used to random words spewing out of her mouth. I blamed her Cambridge credentials. I let many of these words slide, there isn’t enough time in life to understand what and, more importantly, why she says what she says. Maybe it’s a Yorkshire thing. “Who or what is this Metamorphosis that you just mentioned?” Mephistopheles…Mephi! My tortoise. He’s amazing. A fine representation of small reptiles. He used to be a little shit with me until I taught myself to be a person, and then he changed. He no longer shits in my hand, and he hates me less. This is when I knew it was working, so don’t come and tell me this nonsense about being a caricature of someone. I solemnly reject this outrageous premise. “Yes, Emma, but how credible is this turtle?” It wasn’t the first question that came to mind, but it was the only question that seemed appropriate to the dialogue. “It’s not a turtle, it’s a tortoise!”

The following day at the audition, Emma was excited. Expecting her was the conductor of the orchestra and the first violinist. The conductor was relatively young, but you couldn’t call him young. It was the ageing violinist that made the conductor seem much younger than his actual age. 

They were French, and the French couldn’t be more different from the English. Unlike the English, the French have a low tolerance for performative politeness. Their emotions are raw, and their politeness must be earned. As Emma fumbled with her pink case, a detail that wasn’t lost on the small panel, they waited with utter disinterest, a detail that wasn’t lost on her. That was very un-Yorkshire-like, and that made it appealing. It takes time to get used to. French, much like their national product, are like wine. It’s hard to like it the first time you sip it but it's impossible to shake off once you're hooked. 

Eventually, her bow started to slide on her strings. “Oh, this needs tuning,” Emma uttered those words with a benign sense of stating facts and started tuning her instrument. She saw how impatient her panel was but focused on the task at hand. The first violinist saw it as a disrespect to himself and, to a lesser extent, the conductor, but most importantly to the sanctity of the institution she admittedly would like to be a part of and yet doesn’t appreciate the privilege of even being considered. As soon as she finished the lowest string and before she moved to the next one, the old man stopped her. 

“Hum the fifth from the sol.” There wasn’t a could or would, nor there was please or kindly. It was an order, plain and simple. “I beg your pardon! What do you mean?” It wasn’t that Emma didn’t understand the request, it was the realisation of the actuality of her situation.

“Never mind, mademoiselle, carry on. Let us know when you’re ready.” 

The strings are perfect fifths apart, each two strings forms a root and a dominant. She knew all of this and much more, but it all seemed to dissipate in the very moment when she needed to be most present. After a few minutes that seemed like an eternity for both Emma and her panel, she recited the intricate piece. She had practised enough to familiarise herself with the intricate series of notes and yet not enough to let her own character come forth. In music, timing is linear, but within the confinement of the linearity of time, a seasoned musician needs to find eternity. Because within the eternity that takes place in a fraction of a second perfection lies. A goal that can take a lifetime to achieve, and at that moment, she couldn’t be further from that goal. 

It was the simple question she was asked impolitely. It wasn’t meant to gauge her competence but to cast a shadow on her legitimacy as a violinist. A classical French manoeuvre that Emma didn’t see coming.

And so her notes were far from tight, her strokes were hesitant and sloppy, her delivery was mechanical, and all that was left was her pink case. I didn’t know how well or how little she practised. I had no way to know, but I had offered her my black case, and she took offence at my suggestion. The mere notion that I wouldn’t be taken seriously for the colour of my violin case was a testament to the absurdity of the patriarchy! Besides, my case is simply gorgeous. I almost asked if Mephi bought it for her for Christmas, but I stopped in my tracks. I believed she was an exceptional violinist, but then so did she. In a way, that was a part of her problem, but it went beyond that. She liked how well she played the violin more than she liked the instrument itself. When I saw her stepping out of the Opera Bastille, I knew it went horribly wrong. “They discriminated against my disability. They wouldn’t even acknowledge my ADHD and time blindness.”

I almost asked her what time blindness was but opted not to. I almost cracked a joke about time blindness and keeping tempo but feared it wouldn’t land well. I almost showed my frustration with her conflating her neurodivergent brain, whatever that means, with a personality, but I knew this would end our friendship right there and then. 

“Will you try smaller music productions in the meantime? I’m sure I can make some calls.”

“No, don’t bother. I’m going back to Yorkshire.”

“But I thought…why would you do that?”

“Because I have learnt to love myself.”

“I thought that’s why you came to Paris in the first place, Emma!”

“I haven’t seen a single Yorkshire Terrier since I came.”

“What would Mephisephilis do in this situation?”

“MEPHISTOPHELES, but you’re right. Mephi would lose all respect for me if I went back with my tail tucked between my legs. I’ll be the Yorkshire Terrier alpha bitch of this town.”

“That’s the spirit!” I meant to sound encouraging, but I think my tonality was more doubtful than assuring. None of it made sense to me, but that turtle, or tortoise, seemed to believe in Emma Pollar.