A perfect book signing? I did not think they existed! But tonight at Water Street books is about as perfect as I have found so far!
It was not just the “packed house” of 20 -25, or the enthusiasm of an engaged audience filled with fiddle students of fiddler Ellen Carlson.
It was not the fact that Ellen played fiddle for us on her Hutchins Mezzo after she explained how Carleen had inspired her in her own life to follow her bliss.
It was not just that we actually moved some books!
The night was perfect for all these reasons! But it was also perfect because Dan, the legacy of a bookstore owner, gave me unexpected gift. It was as if he handed me a flower that would never fade, never need water.
Dan introduced me by paying tribute to my long journey with Carleen Hutchins that began in August of 1997. That may seem like a small gesture. In fact, it was the opposite.
In most cases, I have downplayed this fact and even tried to hide it. I mean, in one way of thinking in this time of instant communication, when authors seem to put out books overnight, or almost in a never ending series, it is embarrassing to look at such a long journey.
But Dan not only acknowledged this fact, he embraced it as evidence of the worth of going down the rabbit hole and persevering until you get to the other side.
When Carleen Hutchins is your subject, quitting is simply not an option. Every time I got discouraged, or confused or felt supremely lost because Carleen’s story went all over the place, there she stood—the epitome of perseverance! I could not tell Carleen anything new about rejection or discouragement. She already knew that path only too well! But that is exactly it—the journey that Carleen took me on has been a lifetime journey, a journey that was continually pointing me into unknown territory—to the point that I had to feel my way into subjects I knew little about.
And another gift from Carleen is that when I got too lost, I had to ask for help. In 2003, out of desperation, I went searching for help—and found it first at the Metropolitan Museum in the form of two Research Fellowships during 2004-2006.
For instance, in only one part of my research, during August, 2004, sponsored by that fellowship, I toured Europe and interviewed 25 people in 30 days in 9 countries—all colleagues who had worked with Hutchins—musicians, luthiers, physicists, curators, composers.
In 2009, when Carleen died, I was still searching for a way to complete the book—but now had an answer to the question as to whether she would be alive to see the book.
Then in 2013, I was lost again. When I learned that two major violin world events were to happen in Oxford in the summer of 2013, six weeks apart, I wondered how I could get there because my intuition told me that I had to witness these events first hand.
So after a particularly dark and discouraging day of research at Yale, I sat in a coffee shop in New Haven, Connecticut, asking the internet the question—googling “women writer residencies UK.”
After two hours of plummeting down the rabbit hole, I struck gold—a small—but persevering!—fellowship aimed at helping professional women writers over forty!!!!!! Hosking Houses Trust! I sat down at midnight on St. Patrick’s Day and wrote a pie-in-the-sky proposal to Sarah Hosking, the determined lover of literature whose legacy is helping women writers finish their projects, and explained my situation. I had been invited to go to present my project at an AMIS (American Musical Instrument Society) meeting at Oxford and there were two Stradivarius events six weeks later also in Oxford—an exhibit at the Ashmolean and a concert at the Sheldonian. Fifteen minutes later, Sarah wrote me herself! She normally would be totally booked by now, but she did have her English cottage open for six weeks in the spring and could I come in May? The rest is history.
I have been on such an amazing journey with Carleen! And so the last puzzle piece was for me to figure out HOW to share that journey with my readers.
So I hope through its four lenses—different hats, different fiddles, different intermezzos, and the fugue—I pieced together a tale that weaves the story of Carleen Hutchins with the tale of the violin itself. That tale gives you more than you bargained for—but that reflects the horn of plenty that Carleen gave me! I only hope I have managed to pass the same along to my reader!