Artist's Task
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. 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 so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of
two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at
a time, painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He
walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair.
Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor,
undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and
extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and
picks up the 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 reverently
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 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 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 we 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
acknowledge that. You could see him modulating, changing,
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. 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. 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 still make
music with all that we have left.
[ Source Unknown -- from Aiken Drum ]
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