Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: It's always about the music. Music is everything to me.
Speaker 2: Music is the food I eat, it's the blood in
Speaker 2: my veins. Without music, I'm not here. I'm actually not here.
Speaker 1: When world renowned musician Nin Kim first picked up a violin,
Speaker 1: she knew immediately that it would define her, and it
Speaker 1: did until one day in a London train station, everything changed.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if I was ever going to play
Speaker 2: the violin again. I didn't know if I could ever
Speaker 2: listen to music again. I didn't listen to music, even
Speaker 2: if it was the most healing music. I just couldn't
Speaker 2: process it. And in that my life as I knew
Speaker 2: it ended.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, a different kind of identity theft, I'm
Speaker 1: Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. I felt an
Speaker 1: immediate and close connection to me and Kim the first
Speaker 1: time I heard her story. We both began playing the
Speaker 1: violin at a young age, and it quickly became the
Speaker 1: center of our identities. And then we both experienced a
Speaker 1: plot twist. Many of you know what happened in my
Speaker 1: musical career when I was fifteen, an injury to my
Speaker 1: hand left me unable to play. Min's slight change of
Speaker 1: plans arrived a little later in her life, but we'll
Speaker 1: get to that in a bit. For now, let's start
Speaker 1: with Min's love story with music. She says it began
Speaker 1: before she was even born. Min's uncle would often send
Speaker 1: Min's mom classical music records in the mail. Her mom
Speaker 1: loved these recordings, especially the ones that featured the violin,
Speaker 1: and when she became pregnant with men, listening to these
Speaker 1: records became a sort of pregnancy craving.
Speaker 2: It was sort of the highlight of her week to
Speaker 2: get these records. And my parents had a very sort
Speaker 2: of traditional career and marriage where my father would come
Speaker 2: home pay his wages on the kitchen table. My mother
Speaker 2: would budget for the week, but she'd always put some
Speaker 2: money aside because she just so desperately wanted a high
Speaker 2: fight system, and they were terribly expensive in those days.
Speaker 2: But she managed it, and she didn't know she was
Speaker 2: pregnant with me at the time, but she just had
Speaker 2: this yearning to listened to as much classical music as possible.
Speaker 2: She eventually got this hi Fi system and she was
Speaker 2: listening to things like Sibelia's Violin Concerto, Mozart, violin concertos, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovski,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that exposure in my mother's womb. Yeah,
Speaker 2: was my first violin lesson.
Speaker 1: Wow, amazing, What is your first memory of the violin?
Speaker 2: So my best friend at the time, we were both six,
Speaker 2: she had started learning the trumpet for the Salvation Army
Speaker 2: and her sister was playing the violin, and she had
Speaker 2: a quarter sized violin, and I would look at this
Speaker 2: viol and I just felt this sort of pang of
Speaker 2: feeling like I'm at home. It's really difficult to describe
Speaker 2: that sense of wow, everything makes sense. And I think
Speaker 2: that is possibly as a result of we'd actually come
Speaker 2: to England three years before that, and I know it
Speaker 2: was tough. I know it was tough for my parents,
Speaker 2: coming from you know, very Korean culture, not really speaking English,
Speaker 2: learning a new language. So language became really really important
Speaker 2: in my mind at the time, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: seeing this violin, I realized that it's actually another vessel
Speaker 2: for language and music, being the you know, the universal language.
Speaker 2: I sort of realized that actually everything that can be
Speaker 2: expressed can be done through music. And I actually taught
Speaker 2: myself to play the violin before I had my first
Speaker 2: violin lesson via my friend's instrument. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: just twiggled to good. Little style wasn't but it was
Speaker 2: just so exciting. You know that the sounds that the
Speaker 2: violin was capable of making. I think, the freedom of
Speaker 2: having this. You know, you put your finger down and
Speaker 2: it makes a different note. I mean, for a six
Speaker 2: year old, it just absolutely blew my mind.
Speaker 1: It's really delightful for me to hear this story because
Speaker 1: I also started playing the violin at age six, and
Speaker 1: so we must have been an very similar stage of development.
Speaker 3: Oh, I just away of that.
Speaker 1: I remember they would put little pieces of colored tape
Speaker 1: onto the fingerboard to help q where it is that
Speaker 1: we were supposed to put our fingers, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I had a similar level of intrigue and like, ooh,
Speaker 1: this is really cool. Okay, so you had this moment
Speaker 1: at six where you're looking at your friend's violin and
Speaker 1: you feel a sense of home and then I'm presuming
Speaker 1: you ask your mom for your own violin. Can you
Speaker 1: describe me your early relationship once you began playing the violin.
Speaker 1: What was that like? Like, what were you drawn to?
Speaker 1: What did it make you feel?
Speaker 2: It made me feel free. So when I was talking
Speaker 2: about language and things like that, it just felt like
Speaker 2: there were no barriers. I mean, I look back now,
Speaker 2: I did have this sense of destiny. It was like,
Speaker 2: I remember there was a moment around the time that
Speaker 2: I started playing the violin and it starts to rain
Speaker 2: and I didn't have a number. I was in the
Speaker 2: playground and I was looking up into the sky and
Speaker 2: seeing these rain drops falling, and I just knew there
Speaker 2: was a god and I knew that I was supposed
Speaker 2: to play the violin. Right. It's kind of I mean
Speaker 2: I think that now, and I put myself back into
Speaker 2: that six year old mind, and I was deadly serious.
Speaker 2: Do you know what. I think I was more serious
Speaker 2: as a six year old. Now.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, then you were a very
Speaker 1: precocious six year old, because I think my six year
Speaker 1: old brain was like, I love the violin. Also, how
Speaker 1: do I convince my mom to give me more cookies?
Speaker 1: Like that was the level of sophistication that I had.
Speaker 2: Oh well, yeah, yeah, you know, I love cheese sawagy.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's quite extraordinary that you had such a deep
Speaker 1: attachment from such an early age. So how quickly did
Speaker 1: you realize min that you had this incredible gift? And
Speaker 1: I'll say it for you so that you don't have to,
Speaker 1: but you were deemed a child prodigy? So when did
Speaker 1: that happen?
Speaker 2: So actually, one of the reasons why I think it
Speaker 2: was recognized very quickly that I did have an unusual
Speaker 2: talent was because I was actually allergic to rosin. It's
Speaker 2: a substance that you used to oil the bow. That
Speaker 2: the bow is made from horse hair, and so in
Speaker 2: order to make it slightly sticky and produce the sound
Speaker 2: so it's not sort of sliding everywhere, you put this
Speaker 2: rosin on the hair. And in those days, I had
Speaker 2: really really terrible asthma. I was being hospitalized every other month.
Speaker 2: I was allergic to everything, including rosin, and so that
Speaker 2: meant that I couldn't actually practice more than half an
Speaker 2: hour at a time before I would start wheezing, and
Speaker 2: so my mother would have to monitor me, like the
Speaker 2: first sign of the wheezing should make me stop.
Speaker 1: But what it.
Speaker 2: Actually did show was with half an hour practice a day,
Speaker 2: I was still able to progress at a pace that was,
Speaker 2: you know, outside of the norm, and I think that's
Speaker 2: why people called me a prodigy. I mean, I remember
Speaker 2: actually going to the awards ceremony picking up this prize
Speaker 2: that i'd won because I'd got the highest mark in
Speaker 2: the country or something like that, and I'm looking around
Speaker 2: and everybody else is sort of you know, in their
Speaker 2: late teens, and I'm like a child, and yeah, I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 2: I guess that's my life.
Speaker 1: How did your devotion to the violin and your relationship
Speaker 1: with the violin evolve during your teenage years? So, I mean,
Speaker 1: was there a moment in particular where you decided I
Speaker 1: want to be a professional or was that always in
Speaker 1: the cards for you that you knew?
Speaker 2: No, it was actually So that's the bit I suppose
Speaker 2: of my life where I look back now and I
Speaker 2: realized that I really didn't have any control over it
Speaker 2: was already decided by the time I was eight, by
Speaker 2: my teachers, by the school, that I was going to
Speaker 2: be a violinist. I mean, I had no choice in
Speaker 2: the matter. I wasn't complaining because I think I'd always
Speaker 2: felt that that was the case. But I think it
Speaker 2: make me develop a sort of love hate relationship with
Speaker 2: the violin, not music, but with the violin, because I
Speaker 2: think when that kind of expectation is on very young shoulders,
Speaker 2: it does cause a sense of responsibility. I mean one
Speaker 2: of the things that I would hear constantly was the
Speaker 2: word potential. And what a loaded word that is. Expectation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can't help but pick up the subtext behind the
Speaker 2: word potential, which is that the saddest thing is unfulfilled potential.
Speaker 2: And to deal with that as a child, you know,
Speaker 2: not even in double figures. By that we were talking
Speaker 2: eight nine years old. It was Yeah, it was daunting.
Speaker 2: And I remember saying to my mother, I don't think
Speaker 2: I want to play the violin anymore if I'm not
Speaker 2: going to enjoy it. And that was a really strong
Speaker 2: message for her to hear. And she did sit me
Speaker 2: down and say, look, if you don't want to do this,
Speaker 2: you don't have to. And that was the moment that
Speaker 2: I decided that that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Wow, what a nice pressure test. Yeah, So I'd like
Speaker 1: to fast forward over a decade to when you're twenty one,
Speaker 1: and from the perspective of a violinist, you have this
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime opportunity when it comes to the
Speaker 1: violin that you play. Do you mind bringing us back
Speaker 1: to that moment.
Speaker 2: So I'd actually been borrowing violins since I was, oh gosh,
Speaker 2: twelve years old from this dealership, but you know, I
Speaker 2: always wanted to have my own instrument. It's a little
Speaker 2: bit like a house, I suppose, or a home. When
Speaker 2: you own your home, you feel like it's your home.
Speaker 2: You can't be kicked out at any point. I mean,
Speaker 2: the thing about borrowing a violin is that there's always
Speaker 2: that sort of sense at the back of your mind
Speaker 2: that it can be taken away times. So it became
Speaker 2: very important for me to actually own my own instrument,
Speaker 2: and so I asked the dealership if they wouldn't mind
Speaker 2: just keeping an eye out for any instrument. They knew
Speaker 2: my playing very well, and so I just asked them
Speaker 2: to just, you know, to keep an ear to the
Speaker 2: ground if they hear of any instruments that they might
Speaker 2: feel suited me. And as it happened, after a few
Speaker 2: years of nothing, two came along at the same time,
Speaker 2: and so I got the phone call saying, well, we've
Speaker 2: got two violins that we think might suit your playing.
Speaker 2: They're both strads, and I'm thinking, wow, okay, this is
Speaker 2: very unusual.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us what makes the strad so spectacular in
Speaker 1: the world of violinists.
Speaker 2: So, Stradivarius was an incredibly prolific violin maker in the
Speaker 2: sixteen hundreds all the way to the seventeen hundreds. He
Speaker 2: actually lived unti a very ripe old age. He basically
Speaker 2: revolutionized how violins were made. And I think it is
Speaker 2: a real testament to his genius. That's how he visualized
Speaker 2: the violin, how he understood the physics of the violin
Speaker 2: has never been improved. I mean that is incredible. And
Speaker 2: you know, there's no wonder that they're going for millions
Speaker 2: of dollars. So a really quality instrument like a strad,
Speaker 2: it shows you how to play, It teaches you how
Speaker 2: to play, It makes you better, you know, and the
Speaker 2: magic and you feel like, you know how when you
Speaker 2: listen to great singing and it sends shivers down your spine.
Speaker 2: And that's what a top violin playing on the top
Speaker 2: violin does. You feel these electricity, it's magic, you know,
Speaker 2: and you feel alive. So I was presented with two strads.
Speaker 2: I mean, can you imagine two stratavirus is. You know,
Speaker 2: we were actually in my parents' home. The dealer actually
Speaker 2: with a double case, and in that case are two
Speaker 2: violins that's worth more than the house was standing in.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just it's insane, right, And he opens
Speaker 2: the case and I can feel everybody willing me to
Speaker 2: choose the one that has the better pedigree. Gorgeous looking instrument,
Speaker 2: I mean, was just so handsome, had a kind of amber,
Speaker 2: dark amber hue to it. And I picked it up,
Speaker 2: and I mean the sound was just incredible. It sounded
Speaker 2: like Pavarotti. Okay, it had this incredibly rich, rich, vibrant
Speaker 2: just tingles, you know, but you know what didn't feel
Speaker 2: like me. It didn't sound like me. It was like
Speaker 2: I was wearing the most beautiful gown and it just
Speaker 2: didn't suit me. So the other one was smaller, It
Speaker 2: had a much more slender body and neck. It was
Speaker 2: made in sixteen ninety six, it'd been through the walls,
Speaker 2: it had a hole in the top, and you know,
Speaker 2: it didn't come from such a great pedigree year. But
Speaker 2: I picked it up, and you know, I just knew
Speaker 2: it was the one. It felt like you know, when
Speaker 2: you meet someone and you on paper, you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 2: say this is the perfect fit for me, this is
Speaker 2: this is you know, you might not necessarily know that
Speaker 2: it's your match. But the chemistry, and I know it
Speaker 2: sounds so strange talking about a chemistry with a violin,
Speaker 2: but it was the chemistry was just right. It just
Speaker 2: felt right. It felt it felt like it completed me.
Speaker 1: You know, it's I don't know if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of Harry Potter, but it does remind me. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it does remind me of the you know, the one
Speaker 1: chooses the wizard. And what I'm hearing in your story
Speaker 1: is this particular strat of areas chose you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know a lot of people might meet their life
Speaker 2: partner at that age, and I'd never felt like that
Speaker 2: about another person. I was twenty one. You're kind of
Speaker 2: you know, you're on the cusp of leaving childhood, you know,
Speaker 2: youth and really becoming an adult. I was becoming a woman,
Speaker 2: and I think, yeah, it just came at that point
Speaker 2: that I was ready for a new life, and this
Speaker 2: violin really fulfilled that new life. I mean I basically
Speaker 2: invested everything I had in that violin. I had been
Speaker 2: earning since I was ten eleven years old. I won
Speaker 2: a competition when I was eleven which the prize money
Speaker 2: was a lot, which my parents actually invested for me.
Speaker 2: So by the time I actually reached twenty one, I
Speaker 2: actually had enough money to buy a flat. And I
Speaker 2: think the normal thing would be you upgrade your flat
Speaker 2: and buy a bigger place, you know, and so on
Speaker 2: and so forth. Well for me, it was a no brainer.
Speaker 2: I didn't care about my flat. I just need did
Speaker 2: this violin for everything?
Speaker 1: So rather than the flat upgrade, you were like going
Speaker 1: all in and eventually wanting to own this violin.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I had loans, I had mortgages, but yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, it.
Speaker 3: Was my life. Wow.
Speaker 2: But actually also I don't know, it was just it
Speaker 2: gave me a sense of home. It gave me sense stability.
Speaker 2: The thing about the violin as well. And I was
Speaker 2: traveling a lot as well in those days, and whenever
Speaker 2: I felt homesick or whenever I felt like a culture
Speaker 2: shock or anything like that, and I felt like, oh gosh,
Speaker 2: I'm you know, a bit anxious. I don't know where
Speaker 2: I am. If I got out my violin, I played
Speaker 2: a few scales and I would just sort of get
Speaker 2: lost in the violin world. I just felt at home
Speaker 2: so effectively, you know, you're sort of carrying your home
Speaker 2: around with you wherever you go.
Speaker 3: And I loved it.
Speaker 2: It was just it meant everything to me.
Speaker 1: Now, let's fast forward ten years to this called November Day.
Speaker 1: It's twenty ten. You're thirty one years old at the time,
Speaker 1: and everything changed for you. In a London train station.
Speaker 2: So it was actually particularly cold November. I had actually
Speaker 2: been in hospital a few days before with asthma. I
Speaker 2: actually collapsed in the street. I was sort of on
Speaker 2: these heavy duty steroids, you know, head all over the place,
Speaker 2: and I was heading off to Manchester. So got to
Speaker 2: the train station. I was with my boyfriend Matt. We
Speaker 2: got there a little bit early, decided to get something
Speaker 2: to eat. We were in prit Mages, which is our
Speaker 2: Sandward shop, and because I wasn't feeling well, Matt wanted
Speaker 2: to look after my violin. My default position sitting down
Speaker 2: with my violin was to tie the strap around my
Speaker 2: ankle and I would never let anybody carry my violin
Speaker 2: for me. So my response was absolutely no way, and
Speaker 2: we had an argument. We actually had an argument about it,
Speaker 2: and you know, the thing is I'm the kind of
Speaker 2: person I just really don't like creating any kind of
Speaker 2: scene in public. And he was very insistent on looking
Speaker 2: off my violin, and I said, promise me, you'll look
Speaker 2: after it. And then about ten minutes later he said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, where's your violin? And it had gone.
Speaker 2: And in that moment, my life as I knew it ended.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans. Min Kim's beloved violin was gone. Here's what
Speaker 1: happened in the London trains that day. Min had reluctantly
Speaker 1: let her boyfriend watch over her instrument while she grabbed
Speaker 1: a quick sandwich. He got distracted for a moment, and
Speaker 1: someone snatched the violin. Security footage later revealed that three
Speaker 1: men were behind the theft. The violin was valued at
Speaker 1: one point two million pounds. As police began a search,
Speaker 1: Min tried to adjust to life without her violin.
Speaker 2: I was sort of struggling between feeling a sense of,
Speaker 2: you know, just needing to be very practical, dealing with
Speaker 2: the practicalities of it, like the assurance stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and also feeling very guilty about feeling so devastated and
Speaker 2: got it almost like you know, it was there were
Speaker 2: some very well meaning people who loved me and were
Speaker 2: basically just trying to help, and they, you know that,
Speaker 2: they were saying, man, it's just a violin. You know
Speaker 2: there are other violins, And of course they're right, there
Speaker 2: are other violins. But I think for me it was
Speaker 2: like it was akin to say, you've lived somewhere since
Speaker 2: you're twenty one, you've lived somewhere that you've really made
Speaker 2: your home, You've tended the garden, and you know everything
Speaker 2: is your home. You know it's your safe place, it's everything,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden it's destroyed. So that's
Speaker 2: how it felt like for me, and well, I suppose
Speaker 2: it was a sense of loss of identity. It was
Speaker 2: a sense of a loss of everything that i'd actually
Speaker 2: it was my life earnings as well. And at this
Speaker 2: point I'm not even sure what's happening with the insurance,
Speaker 2: so I don't even know if I've actually lost my
Speaker 2: entire life earnings, my savings, my pension, everything. I didn't
Speaker 2: know if I was ever going to play the violin again.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if I could ever listen to music again.
Speaker 2: I didn't listen to music actually, for gosh, the best
Speaker 2: part of six months. I couldn't it was too painful.
Speaker 2: And this is, you know, having been someone who's basically
Speaker 2: been in love with music since I was born, well,
Speaker 2: so as I was in the woomb to all of
Speaker 2: a sudden actually reject music. I had to reject music
Speaker 2: because it was just so painful. I didn't want to feel.
Speaker 2: I didn't want, I couldn't feel. I couldn't cry. To
Speaker 2: cry meant that I had to feel, and to feel
Speaker 2: meant that I was human, and I just felt like
Speaker 2: I was going through the motions. I slept. I was
Speaker 2: just all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to get out of bed, just wanted to sleep.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that for a long time after your violin
Speaker 1: was stolen, you were not even able to listen to music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about when that changed for you and what
Speaker 1: cracked you open again and made music an option for
Speaker 1: you once again.
Speaker 2: So I needed silence, I felt so immediately after the theft.
Speaker 2: I just needed silence. I couldn't process. I couldn't process
Speaker 2: noise or sounds. Everything just sounded like noise and I
Speaker 2: couldn't deal with it. You know how when you listen
Speaker 2: to a song and they have very specific lyrics, very
Speaker 2: meaningful lyrics to something maybe that you've experienced, and it's
Speaker 2: just so exactly what you're going through, and you're just like,
Speaker 2: get it away from me. I can't deal with it,
Speaker 2: you know. And every single piece of music sounded like
Speaker 2: that to me. It was like a dagger to my heart.
Speaker 2: Even if it was the most healing music, I just
Speaker 2: couldn't process it. I certainly couldn't play. And I really
Speaker 2: didn't want to be self indulgent about grieving, and I
Speaker 2: think that's why I denied myself the grieving process for
Speaker 2: so long. I felt guilty that maybe I'm being massively
Speaker 2: self indulgent. So I kind of went into sort of
Speaker 2: soldier mode, giving myself a massive of doses of tough love,
Speaker 2: not actually realizing that what I really needed was to
Speaker 2: just take it easy, just you know, say it's okay
Speaker 2: to cry, It's okay to cry over something so important
Speaker 2: to me. And I think that delayed just sort of
Speaker 2: reconnecting with my life. And the moment actually came through bach.
Speaker 2: I was alone in the flat in Manchester and I
Speaker 2: had this violin that borrowed that sort of be sitting
Speaker 2: unopened for months. Took it out, took out the boat.
Speaker 2: It felt like a golf club in my hand, you know,
Speaker 2: just felt soulless. But I suddenly had an urge to
Speaker 2: play Bach. And the reason, I think is because I
Speaker 2: always think of Bach has been the ultimate detox. You know,
Speaker 2: it's so pure, it's so clean, and my soul felt
Speaker 2: ready to let go of some of the of the
Speaker 2: real darkness. I didn't realize just how in such a
Speaker 2: dark place that i'd been, I hadn't laughed in months.
Speaker 2: I hadn't cried either. So I played a piece by
Speaker 2: Bach called the Chakan, and I started shaking, like my
Speaker 2: body actually started shaking in voluntarily, like it was trying
Speaker 2: to feel something, like it was trying to connect with something.
Speaker 2: And I think it's also because the Chakon being such
Speaker 2: an incredibly powerful piece that he wrote after learning that
Speaker 2: his wife had died, and it's not a sentimental piece,
Speaker 2: but it really does capture life. I'm a huge believer
Speaker 2: in the subconscious mind, just knowing what it's going to do,
Speaker 2: what you're going to do before you even do it.
Speaker 2: And I clearly chose the Bach on a very deep
Speaker 2: level because I think it's the piece that I always
Speaker 2: go back to if I ever feel like I need
Speaker 2: to not even have answers for anything, because I don't
Speaker 2: have answers for anything really, but just that feeling of
Speaker 2: something so much greater that, you know, that wonderment.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it was almost like going back to being a
Speaker 2: child and that wonderment of music and the awe that
Speaker 2: you feel of oh, of discovering music. You're thinking, wow,
Speaker 2: this is nature, this is life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It was almost like discovering music for the very first
Speaker 2: time again and just realizing that everything, every language is
Speaker 2: in music, every emotion, every thought, everything that's ever been
Speaker 2: discovered is in music.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It just freed my mind to stop being so closed.
Speaker 2: And you know, at that point, I was actually living
Speaker 2: in my head with so many walls. There was just
Speaker 2: so many walls around my thought process, and the bars
Speaker 2: chak on just somehow just shattered those walls and it
Speaker 2: helped me. It was almost like I felt I felt
Speaker 2: touch God. I you know, I get really emotionalized remembering
Speaker 2: that feeling of He helped me live again, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's the power of music.
Speaker 1: I love that you use r to describe this moment
Speaker 1: because it I'm just thinking back to your childhood and
Speaker 1: how it was music's are inspiring qualities that led you
Speaker 1: to fall in love with it in the first place,
Speaker 1: and now here you are in adulthood reclaiming those are
Speaker 1: inspiring aspects of music to help you heal from this
Speaker 1: traumatic event in your life, and it's just so beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's like you arde your way through this heartbreak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that sense of awe it led me
Speaker 2: to understand the importance of really getting out of the way,
Speaker 2: you know. I think the times that I felt the
Speaker 2: most blocked was because I was kind of getting in
Speaker 2: the way of myself. So when I was blocking the
Speaker 2: music out, it was because I was getting in the
Speaker 2: way of it and allowing the music to wash over,
Speaker 2: like being in a bath and just letting it flow,
Speaker 2: not trying to control it in any way. And I
Speaker 2: think that's when whatever I'm doing, whether it's practicing, performing, composing,
Speaker 2: even listening, letting go of control is key for everything,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I recently spoke with the psychologist dak Or Keltner, and
Speaker 1: he talks about the fact that one feeling we have
Speaker 1: with art is perceived vastness that we are in the
Speaker 1: presence of something that is so great and big and
Speaker 1: bigger than ourselves, and it can make us feel like
Speaker 1: we are part of a larger hole. They think. When
Speaker 1: you said you kind of got out of the way,
Speaker 1: it aligned with my understanding of all, which is what
Speaker 1: all can do to us is allow us to see
Speaker 1: beyond ourselves. It diminishes the self in a way that's
Speaker 1: actually quite powerful and perspective giving.
Speaker 2: What happened when I lost my violin was because I
Speaker 2: had wrapped so much of my identity with the violin.
Speaker 2: With the violin gone, suddenly I'm left with just me.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do with it. So that
Speaker 2: sense of awe, I sort of temporarily lost it because
Speaker 2: I'm sort of dealing with me as a human being,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, well, there's nothing awesome there, you know,
Speaker 2: and finding that awe again, that feeling of awe is
Speaker 2: forgetting yourself and allowing the music to take shape to
Speaker 2: fill your being, and it's for gosh, it's so powerful, actually,
Speaker 2: and I think that was the reason why I couldn't
Speaker 2: actually let it in. It's such strong medicine actually, that
Speaker 2: sometimes you've got to be a little bit strong and
Speaker 2: I was so weak and I needed to just get
Speaker 2: a little bit stronger in order to be able to
Speaker 2: receive the medicine of music.
Speaker 1: I of course want to know, and I know listeners
Speaker 1: will want to know, if investigators ever found your strativarius.
Speaker 2: Yes, after three very long years, I got the phone
Speaker 2: call and it was elation, followed by the bittersweet realization
Speaker 2: that the violin no longer belonged to me. Who did
Speaker 2: to It belonged to the insurance company within that three years,
Speaker 2: in the normal protocol, the normal way that these things
Speaker 2: are dealt with. You know, my vinyl was insured. I
Speaker 2: had collected the insurance money, and the moment I did that,
Speaker 2: the violin belonged to the insurance company. That's completely fair,
Speaker 2: that's you know, and I had to come to terms
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 1: Did you use the insurance money to buy a new violin?
Speaker 2: I had?
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, yeah, Did it ever feel like you were
Speaker 1: cheating on your strad with this new violin? It's kind
Speaker 1: of a bizarre question, but.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I mean I think it says everything
Speaker 2: that I resented it. Oh interesting, I resented this VI.
Speaker 2: I mean I know that sounds kind of you know
Speaker 2: what what's you're talking about? But yeah, I mean I
Speaker 2: was being massively unfair, you know, I mean, it's not
Speaker 2: It wasn't violence thought that was the rebound instrument.
Speaker 1: Absolutely out of I was trying its investment to fill
Speaker 1: the void, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And I never really truly bonded with it though. And
Speaker 2: I didn't have enough time though to you know, to
Speaker 2: sell it and rebuy my vine only. I only had
Speaker 2: ninety days, and because I had actually purchased this other violin,
Speaker 2: it just wasn't enough time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you get a chance to say goodbye to
Speaker 1: your strad like? Were you ever physically reunited with it?
Speaker 1: Once investigators found it?
Speaker 2: I did, I did, and it was it was painful.
Speaker 2: It was really really painful. I played the last thing
Speaker 2: that I had actually recorded on it, which was the
Speaker 2: Brahms Concerto. I played the slow movement because it seemed
Speaker 2: to sum up. So Brahms wrote this slow movement as
Speaker 2: a love letter to his great unrequired love Clara Schumann
Speaker 2: who so Clara Schumann was married to Brahms's best friend,
Speaker 2: Robert Schumann, and he had been in love with Clara
Speaker 2: forever and then when Robert died everybody expected, including Clara herself,
Speaker 2: that Brahms would, you know, make overtures and you know,
Speaker 2: and he didn't. And it was almost as though the
Speaker 2: pain of unrequirted love was what drove him more than
Speaker 2: the possibility of a real relationship. And you really feel
Speaker 2: that in the slow movement of the Broms. It just
Speaker 2: felt very just felt very fitting to play something that
Speaker 2: is so emotional but in a very kind of painful way.
Speaker 2: You know, how you have a relationship where you do
Speaker 2: learn a lot about love, but you also learn a
Speaker 2: lot about pain. And I think that's what I associate
Speaker 2: the relationship that I had with my strad with I
Speaker 2: learned a lot about love, but I also learned a
Speaker 2: lot about grief and a lot about pain. I'm glad
Speaker 2: I said goodbye to it. I think it was really
Speaker 2: important to say goodbye. I don't want to do it
Speaker 2: again again. I don't want to sort of make too
Speaker 2: much of an analogy with a human relationship, but it was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was kind of like the final goodbye.
Speaker 1: Wow, I'm glad you had that moment of goodbye. So,
Speaker 1: in reflecting back then, I'm wondering if you can tell
Speaker 1: me what this lass has taught you about yourself and
Speaker 1: how you had defined yourself, how you had defined your
Speaker 1: self identity.
Speaker 2: What I learned mainly was that I'm not in control
Speaker 2: of anything. I can make all the plans in the world,
Speaker 2: and control of anything. You know, life is so much bigger.
Speaker 2: But actually, what was quite surprising that came out of
Speaker 2: it was that I rediscovered my love of writing music,
Speaker 2: which I'd always had as a child, but you know,
Speaker 2: it was always on the back burner. And I met
Speaker 2: a wonderful composer called Drew Masters a few years ago,
Speaker 2: and he's, oh, gosh, I love his music so much,
Speaker 2: and I'd always loved his music, and so when we met,
Speaker 2: we just clicked and this energy just suddenly emerged. It
Speaker 2: was like this energy was born. And so it was
Speaker 2: almost like this, So this relationship that I had with
Speaker 2: my violin where we were a unit, I discovered in
Speaker 2: this partnership with Drew as a composer. So we started writing,
Speaker 2: nothing really serious, just sort of messing around a little
Speaker 2: bit in the studio, and we discovered, actually that we
Speaker 2: almost have this telepathy with each other. I'll have an idea,
Speaker 2: He'll have an idea, and we just go. We just
Speaker 2: go with it. We just go with the flow. I
Speaker 2: feel like my identity as Minca, and that's the name
Speaker 2: of the collaboration between Drew and me. I feel like
Speaker 2: Minca is now massively part of my identity. But then
Speaker 2: so was my violin. So what happens when one identity
Speaker 2: goes and another one is born? What happens to the
Speaker 2: old identity? Is it just part of my past? Am
Speaker 2: I bringing part of that identity into Minca? There's questions
Speaker 2: I ask myself every day, actually, because I think there's room.
Speaker 2: I think there's room for all of these different identities.
Speaker 2: And I'm not the same person that I was. It's
Speaker 2: almost like there's me pre violin, there's me. There was
Speaker 2: me pre my violin. There was me and my violin,
Speaker 2: and there's me post my violin, and we are three
Speaker 2: different people. I mean, obviously, you know, the essence, the
Speaker 2: core of a person doesn't change. My soul the same,
Speaker 2: my heart is the same, but I have changed. And
Speaker 2: I look at those years with my violin, like there
Speaker 2: were these sort of ten technically years where everything was
Speaker 2: just massively, massively vibrant. I think I was scared. I
Speaker 2: was fearful that I would never find joy, real joy again.
Speaker 2: But you know what, I feel so joyful now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, that's so wonderful, I really really do. I
Speaker 1: can see it. I can see it in your face.
Speaker 1: I can see it in your smile. I mean, the
Speaker 1: joy is so evident. What I'm hearing is that you
Speaker 1: found that there are many mins you can be yes
Speaker 1: when it comes to loving music.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, I think before you had a very tight grasp
Speaker 1: around Okay, min is the concert violinist who plays this
Speaker 1: strad and you're still a musician, You're still a violinist.
Speaker 1: But I sense that there's a greater capaciousness there, like
Speaker 1: there's more space and more freedom for you to be
Speaker 1: many things within that category.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually feel as though what's happening is I'm
Speaker 2: actually going through what most people go through in their adolescence,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, experimenting, testing the boundaries, pushing the boundaries,
Speaker 2: you know, finding who you are, and having done that,
Speaker 2: I accidentally realized that there's this whole new world of music.
Speaker 2: It's like I actually physically feel something in me blossoming.
Speaker 2: I feel every day I wake up and I'm so happy.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to get out. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: mean that I'm kind of always ecstatic or anything like that,
Speaker 2: but there's always a point in the day where I
Speaker 2: just have this massive sort of dopamine hit because the
Speaker 2: music is just so beautiful and I just can't bear it.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, so free.
Speaker 1: This is Men playing an original song called Queen's Gambit
Speaker 1: from her new project Minka. Hey, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Join me next week when we finish our series on AWE.
Speaker 1: In our first episode of the series, psychologist Daker Keltner
Speaker 1: spoke about a surprising source of AWE called collective effervescence.
Speaker 1: It's the feeling we get when we experience something transcendent
Speaker 1: with other people. Next week, I talked to doctor Shira
Speaker 1: Gabriel about the science of collective effervescence and how we
Speaker 1: can access it more in our everyday lives. See you
Speaker 1: next week. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
Speaker 1: family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Speaker 1: Parkinson Morgan, our sound engineer Andrew Bstola, and our producer
Speaker 1: Tricia Bobita. Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and
Speaker 1: Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. Special thanks this week
Speaker 1: to Min Kim and Drew Masters, who write and perform
Speaker 1: as the musical duo Minca. You heard part of their
Speaker 1: song Queens Gambit in this episode. You can find more
Speaker 1: of their music at sounds like ninca dot com that's
Speaker 1: m I n Ka. We also heard a bit of
Speaker 1: Min's performance of Brahms from her album Gone, released as
Speaker 1: a companion to her memoir by the same name. Special
Speaker 1: thanks also to my friend Rachel Lee, who I've known
Speaker 1: since I was nine years old, for letting us play
Speaker 1: a bit of her performance of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industry,
Speaker 1: so big thanks to everyone there, and of course that's
Speaker 1: very special thanks to Jimmy Wing. You can follow A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
Speaker 2: I have that thing, what's it called earworm where you
Speaker 2: hear music and it's constant, and even now I'm always
Speaker 2: hearing music in my head and sometimes it drives me
Speaker 2: mad because i can't sleep because I've got music going
Speaker 2: on in my head and i can't put ear plugs
Speaker 2: in block out people snoring, but I can't block out
Speaker 2: the music.
Speaker 1: I hear you, by the way, like every Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: song eventually finds its way into my head right right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm glad it's Beethoven for you. For me,
Speaker 1: it's Tess
Speaker 2: Mhm