My large collection of musical instruments, which I never thought of as a collection before, consists of one item.
A violin!
This is my first post in the Hive Collectors community, run by @mipiano.
Since it's my first, I'm also taking inspiration from chickens laying their first egg and making some noise, maybe, maybe someone will see me.
I joined this community some time ago, out of respect for the curator, the same @mipiano, but being shy of the great collections I've seen, I haven't written anything until now.
There's another reason I haven't written here yet. A simple and, I think, common sense reason.
I am not a collector!
Someone might retort that I'm not a photographer either, yet I post in Photography Lovers... He's right and not really..., I'm not a photographer but I'm a "lover", a photography lover.
This remark gave me the courage to want to write in this community too.
I read here, Musical Instruments - do you have a collection? that the topic for February is musical instruments collection.
Good topic, I'd love to write, but I don't have a collection of musical instruments. I only have one item...
I've been thinking about what to do for days. I'd like to write but I'd hate to be disqualified. Collection means, no doubt, more objects. In this case, I don't fit in.
Then I thought about what collector means, or a possible definition, one of many... and this might be it: A person who collects and keeps items that they don't need and don't use for their features. Can it be so?
If that's the case, then I fit. I have a violin. I keep a violin although I don't know how to play the violin, I have never played a musical instrument.
I also believe a collector can be called a collector if he collects only one object. I'm thinking of someone who has a stuffed elephant. Where else would he keep his second one?
Leaving aside my fanciful arguments I will try to show you my collection of musical instruments made up of a single object.
Sorin's violin
First, let me say who Sorin is.
His name is Sorin Chifiriuc and we have been friends for a few years.
Sorin Chifiriuc
Sorin Chifiriuc (b. September 2, 1950, Bucharest) is a Romanian musician (composer, guitarist, bassist - bass guitar - and singer) known for his significant contributions to the development of rock music in his country in the 1970s and 1990s. Since the 1990s, Chifiriuc has also been performing blues music and is known to those close to him by the nickname Skifi. In 2012 he became a monk. Source
By the 1970s I was one of Sorin's many fans. He was one of the few avant-garde musicians in Romanian rock music, as long as it was. Why do I say that? Because at that time Romania was a country with a totalitarian and repressive communist regime, which not only did not encourage rock music and other art forms from the Western and democratic world but tried to suppress them.
Musicians who started composing and playing such music, rock, in this case, were persecuted and banned. They couldn't get an audience on radio and TV and we could hear and see them in small clubs.
I, like most young people of those times, was fascinated by the pop and rock movement that was starting in the West, especially in the UK, and followed with great interest the attempts of local musicians. Among them, Sorin was one of the most non-conformist and rebellious, he dared to do and sing what we couldn't and because of this, he was a kind of idol of the youth. I liked Sorin a lot but I only saw him on stage, I didn't know him personally.
Here on the right is Sorin — in one of the old photos I have. I don't know exactly when the photo was taken, but I'll do the math.
The child in the photo is my son and he was almost 7 years old. Now he is 42 years old. This makes me think the photo is from 1989 or 1990.
You might wonder (or maybe not) but I still have to answer, what is Sorin doing with me and my son?
Well, we've made friends, with the help of a neighbor who is a mutual friend. That's all I'm saying now. I will write in a music place more about my friendship with a rock star from Romania.
Romania is a small country, so its stars were small too and unknown abroad.
The Violin
Sorin left Romania many years ago. He left without looking back, he broke away from all of us, old and new friends.
A good friend of ours, a former member of Sorin's last band and a former conservatory colleague of his, gave me an old violin, not as old as a Stradivarius, but more than 50 years old.
I got this violin not to play it because I don't know, I have no musical training.
I received this violin as a memento of an old friendship.
This violin was Sorin Chifiriuc's violin, the violin with which he studied at the conservatory.
I think the neck is called this part of the violin. We can see the wear and I know Sorin's hand has been there through many years of study and rehearsal.
I put this violin on the wall in the hallway and see it every day. It reminds me not only of a friend but also of my youth and some hard but beautiful years.
As a sort of bridge between the photo of Sorin above, in this last photo, you can see a bas-relief made by my son's daughter, my granddaughter, who is now only a couple of years younger than her father was in the old photo.
This is my musical instrument collection, with one instrument, but many memories.
Can I say that I am a collector of memories?
