jessingrassellino

Category: personal

  • The 2 Octave Schradieck Project

    Starting in January, I was accepted to participate in Nathan Cole’s Virtuoso Master Course (VMC). To say it’s a major commitment to, and investment in, my violin and viola playing is an understatement. To see the progress I’ve made in 8 weeks is a shock, to me. But not to Nathan’s students.

    The thing is, I’m not going into this playing a lot of repertoire. In fact, I’m going backward to go forward. I was fortunate to learn violin in school, with good orchestra teachers. But I did not have the opportunity to seriously study technique until I was in college, and by that time, there were a lot of bad habits I had ingrained, especially in my left hand.

    Fast forward twenty years. I nearly lost my ability to play violin and viola after getting Covid in March 2020, which kicked my Spondyloarthritis (undiagnosed until November 2020) into high gear. I did not know what the hell was happening in my body, but it was bad. After getting diagnosed, the first thing I needed to do was get back to violin. I spent months working with my doctors to figure out a treatment plan that would allow me to play. It paid off. Last August, I worked to audition for several orchestras, and I now play frequently in the Hudson Valley and NYC. It’s not without pain, but it is with SO MUCH JOY!!!!

    Now, I have something rare. I have the gift of time to slow down, and go back and work on my basics. In the past 8 weeks, I have not focused on hard repertoire (except my orchestra music). The bulk of my practice time is spent in the basics I never experienced – one and two octave scales, played slowly, with beautiful tone, in different positions.

    Attention to the placement of the third and fourth fingers of my left hand.

    Alignment and hand frame.

    Speed, intonation.

    After the first four weeks in VMC, I decided the bulk of my practice time will be dedicated to the ugly, unglamorous work of the two octave scale, in all keys. Of Schradieck, played mindfully, attending to the placement of each finger, the way it lifts and returns to the string. The requirement of finger independence AND fingers that will work together as a team.

    This is the stuff of violin nerds. The stuff of technicians that, when mastered, seems effortless, and allows the music to shine through because there is control.

    Yeah, it’s tempting to go back to survival playing and bad habits. But it’s infinitely more rewarding to go on this journey of building mastery of my technique, of getting the experience I couldn’t get as a kid. And now, I appreciate it more. I have the time and the wisdom to know that slowing down, taking my time, and working intentionally on these basics is the thing that will allow me deep freedom and control over my musical expression. I have been keeping a private practice journal, but the little instagram videos I post show surprising progress in the short time I’ve been in the VMC.

    I’m bursting with excitement – I’m so ready to level up my technique and my ability to play violin in the way that reflects how I hear the music in my head! More to come…

  • The Past Comes Back

    Well. Through a series of unexpected events, a whole chunk of my past came back and hit like a brick today. A piece that I’ve placed neatly away in my mind, like a movie or a dream or a memory. I rarely talk about it, rarely engage with it. Denial stains everything about it.

    The wayback machine brought me to an old blog I’d thought lost, and I encountered raw and real and open writing. Things that I’d probably not talk about now, so openly. This bit struck me:

    “For me, there is a permanent homelessness that follows in my heart wherever I am. When I think of home, residences are not the foremost visions in my mind. The essence of a home – somewhere that you know you belong, somewhere that you fit no matter what happens – this essence is something I seek. Something I have sought. An essence that is altoghether missing from my life. So while he drives and stares, my brother reads and waits, I just wonder if and when I will ever go home again.”

    May 28, 2012

    Nine years later, I’ve found home. I’m relieved for Jess of 2012. She found her way through everything these past 9 years. I used to seek that external home – that place I’d walk in and feel “myself”, or that person who could make it so. The essence of belonging, of being whole.

    Back then, I didn’t feel I belonged in myself, let alone the world. Now, I am the world I need. I expand into the world, I inhabit spaces, learn from them, absorb them, become more at home as I expand my experiences, knowledge, mind, space. I’ll always be at home, because I have found a way to love myself, to forgive myself, to accept myself where and how I am.

    It’s a damn journey, one that still makes me anxious at times. But nine years later, I. AM. home.

  • Ableist Against Myself

    I have been chronically ill for 12 years. Even though I’ve cohabitated with my body in varying stages of “physically broken” during this time, I struggled, and still do, to feel comfortable using assistance I need when I need it. Yes, I encourage others to ask for accommodation. Yes, I help my friends and co-workers get what they need. Yes, I create safe spaces for people to speak about their mental and physical health struggles. Even with all of this I do for others, I actively discourage and delay myself in asking for assistance when I need it.

    Internalized ableism is insidious

    You see, internalized ableism is insidious. Like other “isms”, it creeps in through our media, social norms, and values. I’ve learned throughout my life to feel that if I am not capable of accomplishing, that I am fundamentally not worthy. Of love, of care, of basic dignity. Even though I do not believe this is true – I believe strongly that basic human rights are human RIGHTS – when it comes to my own existence and ability, I don’t afford myself the same consideration.

    The most clear way this shows up for me is any time my invisible disability makes itself visible. I work from home, so I can hide most of my daily struggles. Further, with new and better treatment for Ankylosing Spondylitis, I experience symptoms that are far less frequent, and generally much less intense. So, when I do need a mobility aid (for example, forearm crutches or airport travel assistance), I feel like I should “just be able to do things” or “power through it”. Even though I know that using mobility aids in difficult times leads to substantially better outcomes, I wrestle with the necessity – do I really have to show people my weakness? Why can’t I just keep hiding, and then suffer later, in private?

    Of course, now that life is opening up again (post-pandemic, vaccinations more available), now that I can meet people and travel again, all of these issues I’ve been able to avoid for the past year resurface. As I am meeting new people and developing new relationships, it is simultaneously exciting to have so much more ability (because medication) and also terrifying when that comes to a screeching halt (because, disability doesn’t end where meds begin). I’m facing my own feelings and judgements about my own ability. And I know that they are my own, because the people in my life have always been supportive of me, and have encouraged me to do what is most helpful for my health and life.

    I’m not sure how long it will take me to overcome these feelings. To accept that I have a disability that is attacking my body, that will not always be 100% fixed by medication, that will require me to ask for and receive assistance. I’m not sure that I’ll ever feel “normal” when I need my mobility aids, even though I understand logically that they are the best choice for my body and future health.

    I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable, and that in itself is ableism and privilege. The discomfort I feel is ableism; the privilege is that I can frequently hide and avoid the ableism I may experience from others, or more often place on myself. I don’t understand why I am okay with others doing what they need to do to help themselves, but I struggle so much when applying the same rules to myself, and I know this is something I need to unlearn. And I wonder, do other people feel this way about themselves? Do others experience this fractured relationship of logic and feeling when they differentiate between their own needs and the needs of others?



  • Reading the world, slowly

    Back in 2015, I had my final inpatient mental hospitalization. That May, I’d experienced the first break-up of my second marriage. I was hurt beyond imagination – we both were. Then there were dramas with my family. Summer of 2015 hit me hard, and I was unsure if I could tolerate my own hopelessness and grief. 

    So unsure, that I drove myself to the hospital for help. I spent the next two August weeks with a small pile of books and a roommate who was an art student, ten years younger; the thing I remember about her is telling crazy stories about my childhood and my life and teaching, and the two of us laughing so hard at midnight that the nursing staff banged on our door to tell us to shut up. I spent time thinking about how to reconnect with my purpose of being.

    At some point during those weeks, I committed to dive head-first into becoming a better human. I embraced my curiosity as a lease on life. as the thing that could save me from being swallowed by my own small mind. 

    When I got home from that last stay, I did two things: I got my tattoo, and I started thinking about making meaning in my life. I started reading more blogs from different writers. I don’t recall where on the internet I found this blog about one woman’s mission to Read the World in year, but it struck me then as such a profound way to experience the vastness of the world, and the beauty. I decided I would read the world, but, slowly.  Starting with the books I already owned (yes, book collector for life!), I began reading and learning from voices and perspectives and stories that so differed from my own. 

    As I read a story, book, essay, or poem from an author in one country, I’d make notes in my journal, and write short reviews of the experience. Through a series of unfortunate technical fails, the blog content was lost in 2016. All I have remaining from the reading and writing I did during that year is a google sheet where I tracked authors and books from each country, and the status of my reading. A checklist. I was so frustrated that I left the project behind not long after (I think maybe I updated the spreadsheet once in the past 5 years). 

    Until recently, I had all but forgotten this project, and its origins in my life. Opening that spreadsheet with its checklist, I remembered the awe I felt when first compiling it. So many countries, so many histories, and so many stories that exist, and for each of those, multitudes that will never be told. 

    In a way, I’m glad I forgot about this, because when I started it, it was probably more “goal oriented” than it should have been. Remembering anew has caused a desire in me to dig into stories, to learn from this world that has felt so inaccessible this past year. And now, six years after that hot August hospital stay, I have so many better questions to ask the stories.