It doesn’t work with shoes.  She needs to feel the ground beneath her.  That’s why she always takes them off.  Before she does anything else she has to take off her shoes.

Some people rosin the bow with their minds on other things.  That doesn’t work either.  She needs to feel the dry, smooth slide of the rosin cake against the hair.  She needs to feel the springy resistance of the stick of the wood as she tightens the hair to exactly the right tension.  It’s impossible for her to play with a bow if she doesn’t know exactly how the bow feels to the string beneath it.

The strings must never be ignored either.  Each has its own feel, its own tangible color.  Strings may start out as cool and metallic, but they become warm and vital when felt properly.  She plucks a string and gently lays a finger across it to feel its vibrations, its pulse.  Though the muffled note dies quickly in the air, she can still feel the pulse of the string in her skin, her bone.  She needs to feel that life in the string.  It’s impossible to truly make a string speak if she doesn’t understand its voice.

Some musicians play with a cloth over the chin rest of the violin.  This too will not work.  She doesn’t understand how anyone can play without feeling the contact between wood and skin.  The wood has a breath of its own; it shouldn’t be smothered with a cloth.  With each note, the instrument trembles.  Beneath her jaw and against her shoulder and chest, just above her heart, she feels the lifeless wood become animate, almost sentient, with each note pulled out of it.  The strings and bow have their own pulses, but they are nothing without this strong body to awaken each melody.

She stands with her feet slightly apart, toes curling slightly to feel the contact of the floor.  She feels the solidness of her right heel, bearing most of her weight, grounding her.  At its balancing point, the bow feels nearly weightless in her right hand, fingers curling around the wood, sensing exactly where they belong, easily manipulating the stick until it feels right.  Turning her face to the left and flicking her hair aside, she places the violin along her jawbone, feeling the smooth wood and cool metal warm to her skin.  The strings, at first hard under her fingertips, melt and become a part of her fingers as she plays the first note.  She feels the vibrations rushing through the instrument, and the pulse of the string becomes the pulse of her hand.