As of 11:50am Eastern, on January 20th, 2021, a pretender has successfully stolen the seat of the President of the United States of America in an orchestrated coup d'état. At least 100 million Americans didn't want to believe that it would reach this point, but this where we are now. Donald J. Trump was reelected to the office of the President of the United States of America for a second term in 2020 by an absolute landslide, and there is more than enough evidence of foreign intervention, hacking and other forms of election fraud to support that claim. However, our elected officials have proven that they have no interest in viewing this evidence, nor have so-called "journalists" in the main stream media shown any interest in reporting on it. With their joint collusion, our country is now in great peril. We are under the rule of a Chinese Communist Party controlled Pretender in Chief.
In my teenage years, I had the great privilege of being selected to be a violinist in the High School Chamber Orchestra. As a cocky teenager, I did not necessarily understand how great a privilege it was, nor was I fully cognizant of how difficult it was to be proficient enough of a violinist to be selected. One thing I was very aware of, however, was that seniority had more to do with seating arrangements than proficiency, and I fully respected that.
Seniors (students in the 12th grade) were given priority for the first seats, followed by Juniors (students in the 11th grade), then Sophomores (students in the 10th grade) and finally Freshmen (students in the 9th grade). What this effectively meant was that as a Freshman, I was seated toward the back rows of the first violin section, and each year after I was moved closer to the front rows as I became a Sophomore, a Junior. In my Senior year, I was assigned the first seat in the front row of the first violin section, which was understood to be reserved for the most proficient violinist of the chamber orchestra.
For those of you unfamiliar with a typical chamber orchestra, there are usually two sections of violins (known as the first violin and second violin sections, respectively). In the High School Chamber Orchestra, those assigned to the first violin section were understood to be more proficient than those assigned to the second violin section. This was not a slight upon the violinists in the second section because they could not be in the Chamber Orchestra without a significant amount of proficiency in the first place; it simply meant that there were certain nuances in skill level that were used to differentiate between the two sections. There was also a section for violaists, a section for cellists, and we had at least one but typically two bassists as well.
At the start of my Senior year, I had actually expected to be sitting in the second seat, not the first, because in prior years my proficiency level was not as good as a fellow classmate who's father was one of the music instructors at that school. However, in her Senior year, she had decided to stop playing the violin in favor of learning the bassoon, which as I understand it is much sought after by professional orchestras. Oddly enough, my understanding is after college she moved to Nashville to pursue a career in country music with some limited success.
So with my classmate out of the Chamber Orchestra (which had no need of bassoon players) I became the first seat, and since there were no other Senior classmates in the first violin section, a Junior was assigned the second seat. For the sake of protecting the innocent we will refer to her as Mary (which is not her real name).
Mary had ambitions. At the time I was not aware of this, but it appears that since Mary and I shared the same private violin instructor (outside of High School) and therefore our shared instructor was directly aware of our proficiencies, Mary was informed by our instructor that her violin proficiency was in fact superior to mine. I do not dispute that this may be true, from a technical, clinical perspective. However, Mary did not have seniority. Mary was a Junior, and I was a Senior, therefore the first seat was mine, by default.
Mary decided she was going to steal that seat, because if she was the better violinist, then she deserved it. She never told me that she was going to steal the seat. What she did instead was play a dominance game with me. We had a class dedicated to the Chamber Orchestra three days out of the week, and Mary made sure to get to class before me so she could be sitting in the first chair before I arrived.
At first I just shrugged it off as no big deal, took the second seat and let it go, under the presumption that since it was just a rehearsal class, Mary was just sitting in that seat for shits and giggles and she would relinquish it when it was time for our concert performance. As the weeks passed and she continued her dominance game, however, it became apparent to me that she had no intention of giving up the first chair. At that time in my life I was not interested in creating drama, having a confrontation or asking our instructor to intervene, so I decided the best course of action was to let her have the chair, and move to the very last row.
My instructor, who is a very nice man and with whom I had spent a fair number of study periods discussing the finer points of music history, gave me a pained expression when he saw what I was doing, but he did not say anything and allowed it to play out. The other Seniors in the chamber orchestra knew something was not quite right either, and I remember being approached by a few of them asking why I was sitting in the back row. "Mary wants to be the first seat," I would say. "So I'm going to let her. Let's see how good she really is." By this point I had also overheard some other Juniors in the class discussing how Mary was better than me and deserved the chair, and I was not interested in being responsible for creating additional division among my classmates.
Part of this was because in my mind, playing the violin in a chamber orchestra was not really supposed to be a competition. I understand that competition is part of all orchestras and bands, but to me music is art, and art is simply not competitive. It is merely art. So for this snotty little upstart to think that she was going to somehow put me in my place against my will as a show of competitive dominance was counter to my beliefs and ethics in the realm of music, and I simply decided to avoid her game entirely by intentionally positioning myself into the seat of lowest rank.
Finally, the night of our concert arrived. High School Chamber Orchestra concerts were of course performed for the parents of the students in the chamber orchestra, but also teachers and other staff would be in attendance, and also other students in the High School who were interested in such things. I would not rate it as prominent as the regional orchestras that I had also participated in, but it was still significant.
We had three musical pieces prepared for the concert, although the specifics of what those pieces were escapes my memory. What I do remember, however, was that Mary for some reason organized these pieces into the wrong order on her music stand, and, in front of the entire audience, our conductor (the instructor of the Chamber Orchestra) was forced to correct her before we could begin. That seemed to put Mary into an unfocused state, and during that piece, even from the back row, I could see points where Mary had missed a note, or even an entire measure, and was forced to compensate for her mistakes quickly.
The second piece seemed to go relatively smoother in comparison, with few if any mistakes by Mary. The final piece, however, was a complete and utter disaster.
For our final piece, we were performing a Dirge, which would be traditionally performed during a funeral. The piece in particular was extraordinarily difficult in that it was hard to determine where you were in the piece by listening to the rest of the chamber orchestra. You had to pay close attention to the musical score, and not lose your place. The composer had put together a piece that was designed to build in layers in a slow, steady fashion, and pieces like this were an excellent way to show precisely how important the first violin seat truly was.
First violin is meant to lead an orchestra in a manner that is similar, yet different than the role of the conductor. The conductor uses gestures to direct, but the first violin uses their music to lead, which is, if not equally important, almost as important. The rest of the orchestra will always follow the lead of the first violin.
Mary missed an entire measure of notes, skipping them. I saw it happen, and from the back row I did everything I could to try to pull the first violin section back into alignment by performing the correct notes as loudly as I could, but the damage was already done, and nobody else in our section was paying enough attention to correct it.
The second violin section, following Mary's lead, very quickly lost track of where they were supposed to be. This then spread to the viola section and the cello section. In a matter of seconds, the performance went from a somber, respectful piece to a slow, chaotic cacophony of noise. For the first time ever, in any concert that I had ever performed in, our conductor stopped the piece midway through. For the first time ever, I saw fury in our instructor's eyes. He was simultaneously embarrassed and enraged.
Our instructor curtly yet quietly told us the measure number where he wanted us to start from, and we resumed the piece. Thankfully, this time, we were able to stay in sync, and complete the performance without further incident, but the damage had already been done. After the performance, Mary made a beeline for the door with her parents, avoiding eye contact with anyone. A few of my classmates mentioned the disruptions of the concert to me, and I nodded but didn't say anything of note.
The following day, at the start of class, Mary was again sitting in the first violin seat. She saw me walk into the room and I headed straight for her, watching as her eyes widened on my approach.
"I believe you are sitting in my chair," I said curtly. Without a word, Mary stood up, and moved to a seat in the second row. I took the first seat without another word, and I refused to relinquish it for the rest of the year. When our instructor arrived, he took note of the new first row arrangement, nodded at me and started class without saying a word about the disastrous concert the night before.
For several classes after that one, nobody sat next to me. Eventually I told Mary she was welcome to sit in the second chair and she moved back to the first row for our next performance, which went smoothly and without any disruption. However, due to these events, I came to the decision that I would no longer major in music when I attended college the following year. I wanted no part in any music competitions moving forward. The entire experience had left an awful taste in my mouth.
In my understanding, especially considering the words of Juan O' Savin as covered in a previous article, it was necessary for our country to reach this point of crisis. It is necessary for us to remain in this state of crisis for some time, to ensure as many Americans who are still willfully ignorant or fast asleep are forced to wake up to this new reality we have found ourselves in. I do not believe that the United States of America will fall completely to darkness, but I do believe that our rightful President is currently allowing things to progress under the false administration of Pretender Biden and Vice Pretender Harris so that their incompetence and malfeasance is made painfully clear to the entire world. How long this will take, I cannot say, but it is my hope that we will have our course corrected before the 1st day of April, with no fools suffered, nor implied.
After that first disastrous concert of the year, the entire High School Chamber Orchestra fully understood that Mary was not supposed to sit in the first chair, and that she was the one principally responsible for the disruptions that occurred in that concert. I can only hope that the citizens of the United States of America soon come to the similar realizations about Pretender Biden and Vice Pretender Harris.
