Magic Circ Op Rep Ens wrote:
>
> Peter Senge at MIT speaks of Mastery as the fifth discipline. Well, here
> is a story about a Master.
>
> Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
> The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a
> concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City.
[snip]
> 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 that sound meant.
> 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 stage - to either find another violin or else find another
> string
> for this one."
>
> But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then
> signaled to 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, and you know that, but that night Itzhak
> Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing,
> recomposing the piece in his head.
[snip]
> 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. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering,
> doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.
>
> He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and
> then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, 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. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard
> it. And who knows?
> Perhaps that is the way of life - not just for artists but for all of us.
[snip]
Lovely story.
It brings to my mind a couple thoughts:
"Raised high above the clamour of the nonexistent...."
(--Hermann Broch, _The Sleepwalkers_)
But a second thought I have is that this kind of story is all too
"easy for people to find [fill in the blank: awesome, amazing, ...].
It's not something that most "people" could do and therefore they
can alienate their self-feelings into it (it becomes part of
"religion" in a marxist sense).
As Freud showed in "Civilization and its Discontents",
the primary motor of "society" is to frustrate persons'
healthy abilities (AKA "sublimation"). I have always wished, e.g.,
that any parent who was on a repress-their-child'-sexuality
trip would have the *opportunity* to have a child who
was severely crippled in the relevant dimensions of life.
Apply this to all areas of life -- it's just an example (and
perhaps not the best one, but it certainly comes quickly
to my mind...).
Also, we need to recalibrate the "kudo-ometer" of
our society to make it harder for persons to
slip into the mentality of persons like the
captains of the Titanic, Lusitania, submarine Greenville, et al.
*Not screwing up* is a bigger deal than it is
generally given credit for.
Student: Happy the land that breeds a hero.
Galileo: No. Unhappy the land that needs a hero.
The inspiring example of a person "overcoming adversity"
should not distract us from the need to eliminate adversity
altogether from the human world: Never again! (As Elie Wiesel said:
"Don't compare! All suffering is intolerable."
)
--
On PBS Nova once, they had a master Eskimo (Inuit...)
seal hunter. The hunter stood perfectly still for hours
at a seal breathing hole in the ice with his harpoon. Suddenly, the
master hunter struck and got his seal as it came to the
hole for air. He exclaimed: "I almost missed."
No person rises so high that they cannot reach a hand
down to help another person up.
Alas, I have personally encountered at least two persons
in my life (and the lives of my close friends) who showed
that this needs to be said and to be learned.
Hopefully a representative of the violin string maker was
in the audience.
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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