UNCOMMON MEASURE

A masterful debut memoir from a classical violinist that covers far more than just music.

“If you want to change the past,” writes Hodges, “all you have to do is try to record what happened in it.” So begins this memoir in essays in which the author excavates her personal history in order to come to terms with her complex relationship with the violin. From an early age, she dreamed of becoming a violin soloist, practicing for hours each day as a child. Hodges traces her love of music to her Korean American mother, who played violin in high school until her punishing schedule made it impossible to continue. In contrast, the author’s White father disparaged her passion, a tactic that backfired: Hodges now believes that the possibility of defying his hatred of music is part of what spurred her on for so many years. Throughout the collection, Hodges chronicles how her father’s abuse, her mother’s experiences of racism, and her own intense stage fright ended her professional aspirations but could not sway her love of music. That love led her to attempt everything from campus tango lessons to teaching herself an incredibly challenging piece of music four months after putting away her violin. Hodges interweaves these memories with concepts of quantum physics, focusing on theories about time and space that elegantly illustrate the inability she often felt to be present in her own life. “Music itself embodies time,” she writes, “shaping our sense of its passage through patterns of rhythm and harmony, melody and form. We feel that embodiment whenever we witness an orchestra’s collective sway and sigh to the move­ment of a baton, or measure a long car ride by the playlist of songs we’ve run through.” The author’s writing is deeply intelligent and exquisitely personal, expertly balancing emotional vulnerability with trenchant analysis, and her lyrical prose and clarity of thought render each page a pleasure to read.

A gorgeously written, profoundly felt essay collection about time, memory, and music.