Three Strings

-------------------------------------------------
MountainWings A MountainWings Moment
#7184 Wings Over The Mountains of Life
-------------------------------------------------

Three Strings
==============

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
awesome 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. 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 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, re-composing 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
definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a
violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a
concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes
music with 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.

~Author Unknown~

This is so true. Being able to do something with what we have left and even surpassing those times when we have much is quite a fulfillment. It's a manifestation of a true and deep understanding of a discipline, no need for the usual things but only our passion for it.