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 a
time, painfully and
slowly, is a 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, 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, 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. 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 he 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 all stop for a moment, and think how
we can make beautiful music with what we
haveleft.
|
