Me as a Violinist

My
Playing
Path

I began playing the violin at two years old — too young to understand discipline, but old enough to recognize beauty when it resonated through wood and string. My earliest memories are of sound rather than language, of notes before sentences, of a bow that felt heavier than my body but somehow lighter than air. Classical music shaped me first, firm like architecture. Taiwanese street performance shaped me next, alive like wind — full of noise, sweat, people, and heart.

There was a time when I almost let the instrument go. Years of training can make music feel like a cage, even when you love it. But distance has its own kind of magic. When I came to the United States, the violin found me again — not as a duty, but as a voice. I held it like I was meeting an old friend for the second time, and suddenly the world opened into styles I had never touched: jazz that swung like neon light, musical theater that danced like monologue, Latin rhythms that burned, Middle Eastern modes that spiraled like prayer, pop melodies that felt familiar as breath.

Now I move between genres the way light shifts across a room — classical, Taiwanese folk, pop, jazz, musical theater, Middle Eastern, Latin, whatever emotion calls for. The violin is no longer something I must play; it is something I can become. Every performance is a rediscovery, every phrase a reminder that I didn’t just return to the violin — I chose it, and it chose me back.

When I play, I am two years old again. Learning to speak, not with words — but with a string that has never stopped singing.