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Here’s what I have trouble foguring out. I’m someone with a boring office job who’s also a serious amateur violinist. I play in every community orchestra/group I can find, I go to play in classical music festivals, etc.

(Or at least, I used to, before the pandemic. When — and whether — in-person music-making will be a thing again for those of us who are neither professional musicians nor students still remains to be seen. But that’s a whole huge tangent.)

Anyway…according to the “build communism now lmao lol” crowd on twitter/reddit, I can’t tell if I’m:

(1) #winning, by having a life outside of work; or

(2) hopelessly deluded/brainwashed by the toxic capitalist notion that practicing the violin and getting better at playing is something I should be doing, since whatever’s worth doing is worth doing badly uwu lol.

Maybe both, depending on which way the wind is blowing.

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I think the traditional communist view is that your pursuit of classical music betrays right-deviationist tendencies and a dangerously misguided desire (born of false consciousness) to conspicuously flaunt your bourgeois sensibilities. I say burn your violin and spend your free hours rallying the workers of the world.

My own thing is I like to study foreign languages. But that's, you know, totally different...

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Funny enough I just wrote about my husband and his intense though thoroughly amateur love of being a musician. He’s about to play in a 250-trombone ensemble to celebrate the 250th something of something having to do with local trombones I don’t know. The point is, he runs a public safety network and before that he was a police officer. Classic bourgeois delusion! 🙄

You play that violin, babe, and don’t let anybody make you question your love of it.

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