Review by Booklist Review
Part autobiography and part scientific discovery, Hodges' investigation into music and physics is a wonderfully intimate exploration of her experiences and the enigmatic connections between music, performance, and the laws that govern our universe. Hodges begins by reflecting on her skills as a violinist, her hours of practice in a driven effort to become a concert artist, and the crushing impact of performance anxiety. She smoothly transitions to links between sound, time, and neuroscience, which leads to an analysis of "entrainment" or syncing to rhythms. Concepts of time and rhythm powerfully galvanize into an exquisite, eye-opening discussion of improvisation and its connection to entropy as measured in the quantum universe. In considering symmetry, the book's flow intensifies as Hodges simultaneously and courageously illuminates her biracial upbringing with her Korean mother and white father. The book closes with a dazzling look at memory and the universe as hologram. Is reality as we perceive it? Can we know both the beginning and the end of time? Hodges ponders these puzzles with intellectual depth, unique perspectives, and an artistic, eloquent, and inspiring voice.
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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Korean American violinist Hodges debuts with a literary mosaic of invention, inquiry, and wonder that interrogates classical music, quantum entanglement, the Tiger Mother stereotype, and the fluidity of time. The through line is her lifelong study of the violin and how her chronic performance anxiety ("nothing more or less than my fear of relinquishing control over the moment") ended her dreams of becoming a concert solo violinist in her early 20s. To understand how she arrived at that point, she delves into the psychology of musicality, arguing "the desire to make music is as much a desire to assert the individual self as to connect with others." She profiles Gabriela Montero, a classical music outlier whose improvisational talents have fascinated neuroscientists; pays tribute to her mother, a Korean immigrant who gave up music to become a lawyer after graduating from Harvard; condemns her father, a white New England blue blood who thought his children's violin playing "smacked of 'middle-class' immigrant striving"; and looks to quantum physics to reshape her past ambitions into a "more expansive" love for music. In restrained yet lyrical prose, Hodges moves toward a kind of liberation through and from the "closed system of the canon" to offer a luminous meditation on the ways in which art, freedom, and identity intertwine. This impresses at every turn. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Violinist Hodges delves into the intersection of music and time, alternating personal narratives about her journey to become a serious classical musician with explorations of the minutiae of quantum physics, notions of entrainment and temporality, and brain wave experiments performed on pianist-improviser Gabriela Montero. Hodges's frustrations while learning violin pieces and trying to please her parents and teachers will resonate with both amateur and professional musicians. For her technical discourses, she cites luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman and sustains her arguments with recent and historical references, as evidenced in the thorough chapter bibliographies. Hodges is at her best when she opens up about her mother's experiences as a Korean immigrant in Denver and her own struggles with performance anxiety and the challenges of mastering violin warhorses by Johann Sebastian Bach and Niccolo Paganini; these poignant chapters will leave readers emotionally drained but richly rewarded. However, the fascinating science lessons will engage the more scientifically motivated but may prove heavy going for those without the requisite background. VERDICT In all, this title makes a valuable contribution to the ever-expanding universe of works addressing science and music, two seemingly disparate fields that have surprisingly much in common.--Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A masterful debut memoir from a classical violinist that covers far more than just music. "If you want to change the past," writes Hodges, "all you have to do is try to record what happened in it." So begins this memoir in essays in which the author excavates her personal history in order to come to terms with her complex relationship with the violin. From an early age, she dreamed of becoming a violin soloist, practicing for hours each day as a child. Hodges traces her love of music to her Korean American mother, who played violin in high school until her punishing schedule made it impossible to continue. In contrast, the author's White father disparaged her passion, a tactic that backfired: Hodges now believes that the possibility of defying his hatred of music is part of what spurred her on for so many years. Throughout the collection, Hodges chronicles how her father's abuse, her mother's experiences of racism, and her own intense stage fright ended her professional aspirations but could not sway her love of music. That love led her to attempt everything from campus tango lessons to teaching herself an incredibly challenging piece of music four months after putting away her violin. Hodges interweaves these memories with concepts of quantum physics, focusing on theories about time and space that elegantly illustrate the inability she often felt to be present in her own life. "Music itself embodies time," she writes, "shaping our sense of its passage through patterns of rhythm and harmony, melody and form. We feel that embodiment whenever we witness an orchestra's collective sway and sigh to the move-ment of a baton, or measure a long car ride by the playlist of songs we've run through." The author's writing is deeply intelligent and exquisitely personal, expertly balancing emotional vulnerability with trenchant analysis, and her lyrical prose and clarity of thought render each page a pleasure to read. A gorgeously written, profoundly felt essay collection about time, memory, and music. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
