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November 20, 2006
Making Music With the What You Have?
A friend, Paul DeCeglie, emailed me this moving message from Thailand
where he lives. I share it with you
''On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist,
came on stage to give a concert at Lincoln Center in
New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman
concert, you know that getting on stage is no small
achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a
child, and has braces on both legs and walks with
the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the
stage one step at the time, painfully and slowly is
a sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until
he reaches his chair.
Then he sits down, slowly, put his crutches on the
floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot
back and extend the other foot forward. Then he
bends down and picks up his violin, puts it under
his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.
By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They
sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage
to his chair. They remain silent while he undoes the
clasps on his legs, they wait until he is ready to play.
But this time, something went wrong. Just as he
finished the first few bars, one of the strings on
his violin broke. You could hear it snap -- it went
off like gunfire across the room. There was no
mistaking what he had to do.
People who were there that night thought to
themselves: "We figured that he would have to get
up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches
and limp his way off the stage -- to either find
another violin or else find another string for this
one. Or wait for someone to bring him another.
But he didn't. Instead he waited a moment, closed
his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin
again. The orchestra began, and he played from where
he had left off. And he played with such passion and
such power and such purity, as they had never heard
before.
Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to
play a symphonic work with just three strings. I
know that, you know that. But that night Itzhak
Perlman refused to know that. You could see him
modulating, changing and recomposing the piece in
his head. At one point it sounded like he was
de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them
that they had never made before.
when he finished, there was an awesome silence in
the room. And then people rose and cheered. There
was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every
corner of the auditorium. Everyone was on their
feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything they
could to show how much they appreciated what he had done.
He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his
bow to quiet the audience, not boastfully, but in a
quiet reverent tone:
"YOU KNOW, SOMETIMES IT IS THE ARTIST'S TASK TO FIND
OUT HOW MUCH MUSIC YOU CAN STILL MAKE WITH WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT."
What a powerful line that is. And who knows? Perhaps
that is the way of life -- not just for an artist
but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared
all his life to make music on a violin with four
strings, who all of a sudden, in the middle of a
concert, finds himself with only three strings and
the music he made that night with just three strings
was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable,
than any that had ever made before, when he had four
strings.
So perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing,
bewildering world in which we live, is to make
music, at first with all that we have, and then when
that is no longer possible, to make music with what
we have left.
In this year where so much has been taken from us
all, let us stop for a moment during this holiday
season and think how we can make beautiful music
with what we have left.
IN THAT SPIRIT I WISH YOU
SHALOM''
Posted by billz at November 20, 2006 08:55 AM
