Klarinet Archive - Posting 000674.txt from 1999/07

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] silver - to make non slippery
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 14:36:32 -0400

Several people have mentioned using string players' rosin on fingers to
prevent slipping on the keys. One word of caution about that: Don't rub your
eyes until you wash your hands. Rosin will temporarily blind you.

My husband plays the violin and has taught himself to be careful never to get
rosin on his face. It used to be an old trick among boxers to use the glove
to dab up some rosin from the floor of the ring (sprinkled with powdered
rosin so the fighters' feet won't slip). The next punch that landed would
grind the rosin into the opponent's eyes. Sometimes the gloves picked up
rosin by accident, too. That's why, when a fighter slips or gets knocked
down, the referee will always rub the guy's gloves off on his shirt before
allowing the fight to proceed.

In high school, I knew a boy, a talented violinist who later became a
professional, who nearly lost his career before it began, because of
temporary blindness before performing. First it only happened at recitals.
Then it began to happen every day in orchestra rehearsal. Then it started
happening when he practiced at home, too. His eyes would well with tears, he
would go completely blind, and then he would begin to shake with fear that he
couldn't play.

He took a sabbatical. His problems disappeared. He went back to playing the
violin. Immediately the problems came back, worse than before. Now his
hands,became so severely chapped, red and scaly, apparently from psoriasis,
that his finger dexterity suffered.

He cancelled several recitals and was on the verge of quitting the violin for
good when his psychiatrist (attempting to reconcile apparent hysterical
blindness with a family history that made such a diagnosis extremely
unlikely) asked him to bring his violin to an appointment. The psychiatrist
noticed that my friend had developed a nerve-calming but somewhat obsessional
ritual of preparing to play by slowly and methodically rosining his bow with
the same number of swipes every time, wrapping the rosin cake carefully in
its felt, tying the ribbon in a perfect bow (which he would sometimes re-tie
several times before he got it to look just right), setting the rosin cake
down just so, always in the same position in his case, then turning his
violin bow this way and that, shaking excess rosin dust off it, yawning --
and then rubbing his eyes. He was getting rosin all over his fingers and
rubbing it into his eyes every time he prepared to play. So much for the
hysterical blindness! The shrink also learned that constant exposure to
resin can cause allergic sensitivity. Keeping the rosin off the fingers
cured my friend's skin problem, too.

Lelia

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