The Cost of Silence

Playing with local musicians at Tom’s Bar in Estepona, Spain (June, 2025)

“Don’t disturb the peace.” I’m sure you’ve heard those words echoed over and over again. You may have even echoed them yourself. Don’t disturb the peace, don’t rock the boat, don’t be a nuisance—the list goes on. A laugh muffled, a hurrah stifled, a voice now muted. But is there a cost to our desire for silence? Is there a cost for rebuking our neighbors for playing too loud? A warning glare to a child singing? A furious screech upon discovering a mess of artistic mayhem? What is the cost of a muffled scream?

As I’ve been searching for the courage to publicly play violin again, I’ve been circling these questions over and over again. Today, I woke up, took Pip down to the beach and, as we were walking along the paseo, a song filled my head.  It had a beautiful, joyful melody and I couldn’t help but beam. I rushed back home, took out my violin and started playing, jotting down notes as I went. I carried that goofy smile all the way to Spanish class 40 minutes later and was even tempted to ditch class just to knock out the song. 

I couldn’t let it go. I drew lines first thing when I sat down and quickly bubbled in a line of notes before class began. The teacher and another student saw and asked me about it. “Esta manana, cuando caminar la playa con me perro, una cancion…a mi cabeza. Entonces, voy a mi casa y tocar me violin,” I managed. A few people gasped, “your neighbors don’t complain?”  One woman, an older woman in her 60’s adorned in Prada, gigantic stones, with a tendency to roll her eyes, even insinuated my neighbor might be deaf. 

I could feel the fumes rising from my head. These are the very same people who have moved here to Spain, to listen to guitarists and other musicians play in the plaza, while sipping their cafes and vinos leisurely. Imagine leaving behind decade-long friendships and family members to retire along a coast, to lay on the beach and sip wine while listening to live music, only to insinuate playing music outside is a racket. The sheer audacity. 

The thing is, every artist, every musician, every expert starts somewhere and that somewhere is at square one. What is an expert but someone who has made hundreds of thousands of mistakes? It’s incredibly frustrating hearing over and over again as someone peers over your shoulder or listens to you play and chimes, “wow! You’re really good! You have so much talent!” 

Honestly? No. What I have is hours and hours spent practicing and playing. Whether it’s going to 3-hour life drawing classes at night twice a week after an exhausting day of work or practicing for months before auditioning for a symphony, all of it involved the pain of messes and mistakes.

So many mistakes. So many messes. That’s the cost of learning and building something. Like most instruments, especially the violin, there is a period of time where “it sounds like dying cats” would only be somewhat close to an accurate name for it. That period lasts about two years… if you’re lucky. But if no one suffers through listening to someone screeching away on an instrument, how do we expect to hear them later when they sound great? How can we expect to continue to listen to live music, sipping coffee in a plaza, taking in the spring flowers on a magical, blooming day? If you stick someone in a room until they’re ‘acceptable’ or ‘good enough’, at what point will that person be confident enough to step outside that tiny room and shine? And who’s to say what is ‘good enough’ anyway? The more I learn, the more I discover there is so much more to learn. We will forever find ourselves ‘not good enough’ needing to learn more. We don’t hold children’s concerts because they’re good—we hold them to teach children, it’s not just ok, it’s wonderful to take a risk. It’s a beautiful thing to let yourself shine. And even if we mess up, that’s ok. You’re loved and tomorrow is always a new day.

One of the most beautiful things I have encountered is being able to play with other musicians. Not only is it incredibly fun, but playing with people who are encouraging and even better than you, fosters growth, improvisation, and community. We watch so many movies and hear so many stories of people coming together before television to play music outside, to dance together, to just be together and have fun. 

So we must ask ourselves, is peace today worth the price of no music tomorrow? Is the mess today too big to deny ourselves tomorrow’s beauty? What is the scariest moment if not dead silence? One thing I’ve learned throughout all of this, listening to those voices—the ones telling you to “shut up”—starves your soul. It leaves your breath held and your chest tight. There is no release. Julia Cameron puts it this way, “we expect our artists to be able to function without giving it what it needs to do so…Over time, if our warnings are ignored and we deem to stay in whatever circumstance—marriage, job, friendship…homicide gives way to suicide. ‘I want to kill myself’ replaces ‘I could murder you.’” It perfectly encapsulates the importance of a scream. The internal fighting will to defend yourself and fight back. When you do find your scream, you may be surprised by how badly you needed it. 

As a kid, I dreamt of being a part of a traveling caravan fiddling with my violin as others danced around the campfire. Today, that dream still persists. I’m starting to recognize, I may have continued to play violin as a child even if I wasn’t forced to because that passion is innate. I think that’s such an important thing to recognize. Maybe my parents recognized that and saw the ‘potential’ to become great but didn’t understand I needed a softer flame. I became brittle, I broke, and I refused to play for years. Regardless, I am thankful, for whatever reason, they put up with the inconvenient noises of the pain of learning a skill, so that today, I rediscover what sparks my soul. And maybe tomorrow, I will find my roar.  

P.S. I found out today my neighbor likes my violin playing and even said “Wow! I came back to the house to hear the violin and it really felt like I was in Europe!”

P.S.S. I want to write a lot more. I write a ton in my journal and currently when I write blogs, if it takes me 2 hours to write it, I spend 4 editing. But I think we fall into a trap of thinking quality comes before quantity. Even rereading my earlier blogs, there’s a lot I would change now. So in an effort to get better, I may reduce my editing time significantly.