Having visited only twice, I am not able to describe this city, which can only be experienced by being there, living there. But I will say that until I first went to New Orleans, I did not feel that I knew America. It’s not all pretty; but it is so full of culture, full of life, full of music, full of tradition and style that it throws into sharp relief much of the rest of the country, and the overflowing cultural life of the town, the sense of style and class made me proud in a different way of my country.

Volunteering
The opportunity to go down came from my church singing position at Trinity Wall Street, organized by two colleagues, Nacole Palmer and Molly Quinn. They had both been down previously and dreamt up the idea of the choir helping with a summer music camp for kids in the Lower Ninth Ward.

I was hesitant to go for two reasons. One is that I do work with kids for a living. I go into schools and spend varying amounts of time in residencies working with kids helping them to write their own music. Some are great young musicians, some can’t read music, but we always get something great from them. At the end of a long year, I was tired, exhausted, done, ready for summer. The other reason I didn’t want to go is that it takes a lot of energy to do one of these trips. The rest of life fades away, one loses all correspondence, and there’s no way of doing one’s own work. And this summer is one of several big composition projects. So I protested, and delayed my decision indefinitely.

But a colleague described what it’s like to volunteer; that it’s rewarding personally, that it’s something that gives back more than you give out, that it reaffirms what we’re doing here in this life. I began to think it over, and while the work I do is good for kids, is always welcomed in schools, and is something that I come home after a long day knowing I’ve done something good in the world-it was not volunteering. And I realized I had hardly ever volunteered in my life. Donate to charity? Yes, a bit. But never a soup kitchen, rarely anything at all. So much energy spent getting ahead, raising money for my projects, earning enough to live in an expensive city.

And I am inspired by President Obama’s call for youth to volunteer for their country-not just in the Army, but locally. That every high school student should volunteer some considerable amount of their time in order to graduate high school.

So I decided to go, and give something back.

By going to the Lower Ninth Ward, we were going to the place of greatest media concentration, and what has become emblematic about the city in the eyes of the nation, so it’s important to remember that the Lower Ninth was not the only area affected by the hurricane, and it is not the only area that remains as devastated by it. But All Souls happens to be the first Episcopal mission in that area of the city, and so that is where we spent the most time.

Something I didn’t realize about volunteering is that it gives back far more than we give into it. To have the chance to do something that helps someone else, to come into a situation where kids are excited to learn, where they are bused in every day to come to camp on time, where their families are assisted so that they can be there regularly-that is already so much. I remember a year or so ago, Anne Mallonee, who is the Vicar at Trinity Wall Street, gave a sermon where she very practically laid out some figures about satisfaction in life, and said that in overwhelming fashion, those that volunteer are more satisfied with their lives than those that don’t. I know that the few friends of mine who have volunteered substantial amounts of time feel nothing but satisfaction about that work.

I say all this with apprehension, because I am a firm believer in ‘don’t let the right hand know what the left is doing.’ I think that if you pray, do it privately; I think when you give, do it privately. And one of the consistent things I found while I was down there was that everyone who was volunteering, across the board, refused to take credit for what they were doing. For everyone, it was an acknowledgement of the magnitude of what others were doing; of the small amount that they were capable of on their own; of the enormity of what remains to be done. So I am very aware that what we did is a small drop in what these kids need in their lives, and such a brief glimmer in what the volunteers down there are doing on a daily basis-and consistency is what those kids need more than anything. The people who are there day in and day out, who are consistent role models for the kids, who are dedicating their lives to rebuilding, they are the heroes.

The work
In teaching, a great lesson is centered around asking the right question at just the right time. As a teacher, I live for the moment in a lesson when we can ask an open-ended question, one that no one has a definitive answer to, but that gets us to think deeply, and ask it. As a student, one can find these questions challenging, and they are not always welcome, but if it is a good question, it will outlast the classroom, and might be something that keeps getting asked. I remember a course I took in college, and introduction to Art History, where the young professor asked us, early on, “What is Art?” It was such an old, hackneyed, beat-up question; but it guided the way we learned that semester, and it is a question we never stop asking-and it is a question that we revise and revisit our answer to year by year.

I stayed up half the night before our first lesson trying to imagine how we would engage with the kids. What would be the best warm-up activity, something that would get us started in the right direction? What would the kids be like? Would they be willing to participate? Would their attendance be scattered? Would they be excited to participate? Would there be only 4, or more than 20? Would they be on time or late, how much time should the warm-up take, how creative should we/could we get, how physical, would the film crew be filming or participating, what would the physical set up be?

We arrived, the place was different than I had imagined, open dry-wall, dust and plaster many places, a beautiful sanctuary set up with chairs and an altar and a green Episcopal altar cloth, big Paschal candles, flags, nice blue chairs, and total chaos regarding kids and volunteers. There were four different groups there, preparing to spread out over the Lower Ninth and rebuild? One group was to reorganize huge trunks that had been donated by a mega-church filled with electronic equipment; another group was painting the office. Piles of computers lay in the back, along with a play-area of old mattresses and couches. Functional bathrooms with no light, the only way to see either from work-lights or the bright 9am sun that streamed through the doorways.

We made name-tags for everyone, and as nine o’clock approached, began to gather them towards the careful circle of chairs we had assembled.

And then, with these careful plans all ready to go, all the students there on time, our circle of chairs formed, the students all joining in one place, a volunteer group from the Buffalo area started a prayer service that they said would take 15 or 20 minutes. What should we do? Join in? Or leave and go elsewhere? All of the adults looked to each other, and an impulse was sent out the door-so, within five minutes, we had re-gathered outside, in the astounding sunshine, to do a warm up with no chairs, and piles of lumber around us.

As it turned out, the activity was a big success-to say our names and the gesture of an activity we love to do. I think I can still recite all the gestures now, a week later. We did get to know each other, and we learned each other’s names. It was a high-energy choice for the hot sun, and it involved a lot of repetition, starting with Chris, the highest-energy of the group, doing an elaborate basketball move, and several students making a gesture of ‘nothing,’ some for ‘sleep,’ and Ivan’s infamous ‘click, click’ for the internet. When we went back inside, we were drenched with sweat, and there was of course no air-conditioning, and no lights on inside. But halfway through our first lesson, the lights came on, and everyone started to applaud.

How many months had Father Wright petitioned the city for the ability to have electricity in that abandoned Wallgreen’s? And finally, after two years, it was on. An auspicious and positive sign for us all.

A week after the fact, most of my memories of the teaching have lumped together. The first day was rather difficult; the second was a dream day. The third day was the hardest; the fourth was incredible, the last day a good focused preparation for the concert, all our routines flowing smoothly. In general, it was beautiful for me to watch my colleagues get more and more comfortable with the kids, and the teaching become more interactive, more socratic, more engaged. Part of this was our increased consistency in our teaching-what level of attention we expected, how we dealt with erratic behavior, knowing the kids and what their particularities were. Part of it was for some of them experience in the classroom. And part of it was that the kids got more convinced of the work we were doing, and were more and more willing to participate.

Teaching these kids reminded me of the need for fairness. One of the first interactions we had with the kids was before our first class, when kids were haphazardly throwing themselves on us, hugging, or play-fighting, or shaking hands. Nacole had already forged interactions with some of them; and they were using her iPhone. Soon many of us had lent them our technologically-savvy phones, and they were blissed-out using them.

During our planning session that night, we agreed to not bring our phones in-it seemed a recipe for unfairness. But on the second day, I came in to discover a few phones already being used-and while I tried to explain to Ivan that it wasn’t fair to lend phones only to some and not others, I realized we couldn’t be inconsistent with whose phones were out. So I lent him my phone again, and during every free break, all of my electronics were in constant circulation.

This need for fairness came under the gravest attack on the last day, when Ivan, who had been one of the only students to ask me for my computer, asked that day later than some other students. The performance was coming up in under an hour, and my computer was being passed from one student to another in the back room. But Ivan didn’t find it fair. He asked me to take the computer from them, that it was his turn. I went to the back room, and found Father Matt presiding over a very orderly group of kids watching something on the screen; so I went back to Ivan and told him it was only fair for them to use it, as he had been using it so much. He walked away from me crying, and I so I went after him, sat down with him, and asked him why he was upset. “I want to use the internet,” he said. I asked him if he understood why I had lent the computer to the other students instead, and he said no. I asked him if he thought I wasn’t honoring our friendship by not letting him use it, and he said yes. I found Wesley, who said we could use his computer, and Ivan was appeased. I began to think again about fairness. It’s not always logical; and we can’t change the rules once they’ve been set. For Ivan. who cared about being on the internet more than anyone I’ve ever met, fair was for him to use my equipment, since he had done so every day, every hour preceding this.

One of the premises I tried to operate under during that time was to “not be stingy with the gifts we bring.” I think our fancy technology, which we take for granted, fell into that category. The kids wanted to know how much they cost, these computers and phones, how much per month. I told them, and then tried to imagine what those numbers would mean to a kid of nine. When in life do we come to understand the value of money? In think when we start earning it, and spending our own. And some people, I would think, never do understand the value of a dollar.

Along the same lines, immediately before we went out for our Friday performance, the guitar teacher, Earlette, became very upset about Isam’s t shirt. He was wearing his own black t-shirt, while everyone else wore the brightly colored shirts we had brought. Someone had decided to make an exception, and I told Earlette that it was like this when we taught in a group-I couldn’t contradict another teacher’s decision, because it wouldn’t be consistent. (Even if the inconsistency was the cause of this problem!) We had been marveling at Isam’s transformation all week, and his participation in the concert was fantastic.

The concert
The choir members who volunteered in New Orleans gathered recently to watch the DVD of the students’ concert, and it brought that week back in full force. It is hard to believe what we did in five days, or really what they did in five days, since they were the ones that learned an entire concert of music. Everyone sang, and used their full voice. They presented themselves well, they delivered the music with passion, they bowed; for us the whole concert was a dream come true.

The girls-Erenisha, Devinisha, and Pooh, sang beautifully, Isam played a heroic violin solo of “when the saints,” the recorder all stars played jazz solos (about which more later). And the piece that the kids had written themselves was performed by their teachers, ending with the whole audience singing along to the final song, with the original lyrics “In this room there is a lot of togetherness.” This was the piece they called “Together Forever/Aeropostale: with love from the Lower Ninth Ward.”

One of the beautiful moments of this concert was standing off to the side of the stage and watching the recorder all-stars playing an original blues with Ben, and taking their first flight playing solos on the recorder. We had gotten to know these kids well, we had been working with them and playing with them and holding them when they were sick, keeping them focused in class and roughhousing when class was done. But then they started playing their solos, and they were flying. They were up somewhere soaring and they were playing real music. They each had their own ideas, they each took it to a different place. I felt like I was witnessing that moment when a chick is pushed out of the nest-I was watching their first public performance, and their response was to take out these wings that had been somewhere, hidden, and start to fly.

Fragments

Driving across the city every day, we began to find the scenes more normal. The spray-painted house-fronts with numbers of date of inspection, NE for “No Entry,” a number for the number of bodies found inside. TFW for toxic flood water. Still, four years later, we see spray paint from the winter of 2005 on the outside of houses. The neighborhoods became more familiar, the circuitous routes that one takes to get from Maiterie to the Lower Ninth. We  became accustomed to the drawbridge on St. Claude avenue, the rapid shifts between houses from block to block. The empty lots, the public art displaying the water levels during the flood. The po’boy joints, people walking in the heat, the late night listening to jazz on Frenchmen-these became a part of us as well as the kids and the music and the church community.

News
The concert that we gave at Trinity New Orleans is going to be released as a CD, the profits from which will go towards the All Souls mission. As soon as I have news about how to buy that, I will. In the meantime, visit the links below for more information.

http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/news/blogs/music-mission-in-new-orleans

Life-Changing Music:
The Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, November 2003

Preface

So much has happened in the past six years, since I wrote these words. I was accepted as a master’s student at Mannes for the following fall; and graduated in 2006. I did write for orchestra, not once but several times. I’ve had some success as a composer, some wonderful commissions, have worked with many of the top players in New York. I’ve traveled to Lucerne for the Luzerner Festival, to Salzburg for the Österfestspiel, and for two years following that concert, virtually lived at Carnegie Hall, attending more than 50 performances a year for three years in a row.

For the past three years, part of my teaching work has been with Carnegie Hall, and my first job for them was, in fact, with the Zukunft@BerlinPhil-the Berlin Philharmonic’s music education program, widely renowned for their innovative curricula.

Finally, I’ve begun to study conducting myself, attending workshops and taking private lessons, arranging readings for my education and taking auditions for master’s programs. I’m sure in another four or six years to look back on this time in my life will seems distant, but with my publication of blogs, with this newly formed resolve to share my written thoughts in words as well as music, this seemed the best time to publish this essay on my website.

I can read in this work my naivite, shocking to me now-to not know Ligeti; to never have been to a working rehearsal; to not know Carnegie Hall! But it is also the case for most normal human beings; it is important to remember just how rich and extraordinary the orchestra is, and the effect it can have on a human being. And it is also important to remember that one act of great generosity can quite simply change someone’s life forever. Carlos, thank you again.

J.B., 17th August, 2009, en route to Lucerne, Switzerland

_________________________________________________

Life-Changing Music

For Carlos
with gratitude and inspiration

When a concert changes one’s life, it is not the larger circles of life that shift, not the shape of the buildings or the direction of one’s career, but the very small circles, the inner gears themselves. The air feels different, the sky less cold, one’s heart a different timbre. Using the lessons learned from falling in love, one knows one need not shout the moment to the stars, open one’s lungs to the night. Instead, there is a quiet reserve that has been filled, and with each breath it seems possible to feel once again the velvet, hear again the tangible silence of three thousand people waiting for the first sound to emerge, almost to see once again the sound as it blooms in the air, matures, explodes and dies in ecstasy upon one’s ears.

There are physical structures that transform us as human beings, buildings which by their very existence bring a sense of awe and humility. When one first enters a Gothic cathedral, or when one first looks up from the base at the former World Trade Center, there is a moment when it is impossible to believe that human beings created what one is experiencing. The space is too large, the proportions too startling. Such a building can thus stretch us internally, augment a perception of what is possible, of what humanity is capable.
That sound can similarly shift the very boundaries of perception is an idea with which the Berlin Philharmonic is familiar. They are in the business of making music on the very highest level in the world, consistently, with intensity, joy and passion, and it is inevitable that along the trajectory of their excellence will be a few awed spectators for whom the simple vision of their orbit is enough to revive hope and a belief in the divine.

I didn’t know any of this, of course, when a Swiss friend of mine invited me to watch a dress rehearsal on Wednesday the 12th of November. I hadn’t been out to see music in a long time, because I’d been working nights more often than not, and didn’t have any money to spend on entertainment, but we had been out the night before to see Noche Flamenca, a show that held at its core the idea that flamenco is an art form of sadness, of a lament. It was a powerful work, one that had the audience enthralled and actively involved; the lead dancer, Soledad Barrio, drew a standing ovation with every solo. We had walked on the street afterward holding our fists, closing our eyes and trying to capture the llanto of the singers, the attitude of the dancers, the seriousness of the guitars. I can get excited by music, especially music strongly entrenched in a culture, and during one of my attempts to imitate the art we had seen, a group of teenage boys stopped me. “Excuse me, but man, what are you talking about?” I told him Flamenco, and he said, “Damn, I got to get me some of that!”

At a sake bar that night, my friend mentioned that he was going to Carnegie Hall the next day. “Would you like to come?” he asked me innocently. “It is the best orchestra in the world, and they are playing Bartok. I know some members of the orchestra, and they can get us in.” I didn’t have to hesitate. “Of course, Francisco,” I said. “You know that to write for orchestra is my dream.”

When I showed up on Wednesday morning, the air was cold. I waited with coffee in my hand for Francisco to show, and he did, carrying an enormous suitcase. He was flying later that afternoon, he said, back to Europe. The giant suitcase didn’t cause any trouble at the door; my friend had played at Lucerne the summer before, and knew many of the musicians. Martin Löhr, the principal cellist, let us in with his backstage passes. Francisco left his suitcase in the dressing room, and we walked out to the hall.

“Have you ever been here before, Francisco?” I asked him as we walked into the orchestra section of Carnegie. “No, never. Is it a good hall?” he said. “It is a miracle of nature,” I told him. “A wonder of the world. Sound in here is like magic. Let’s sit right in the middle of the hall, behind the conductor. We won’t see many of the players, but the sound will be excellent.” I had been able to sit down in the orchestra only once before, to hear the St. Matthew Passion played by the BSO, and remembered how thick the sound had felt in the 20th row.

“Did you say that this is the best orchestra in the world?” I asked him as we watched the orchestra warm up and the stage-hands adjust the podium. “Yes,” he said. “At Lucerne there was a big joke because one of the papers wrote a review about how the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was the best orchestra in the world, and all the Berlin players just laughed, because they knew that it was not a real orchestra, just a honeymoon. When you talk about an orchestra, it has to be one with a real schedule and this one has more of a legacy than any other.” And at that point Sir Simon motioned for silence.

The Carnegie Hall liaison spoke, standing next to the podium, with Maestro Rattle leaning with one leg on the podium, visibly itching to get up and start working. “We at Carnegie Hall are honored to have back with us the Berlin Philharmonic,” he said, and there was a quiet applause from the orchestra. “We have not seen you since your moving series in September 2001,” and he paused while we all thought about exactly when that was, what we had been doing, “and we want to thank you once again for that meaningful visit. We are here to make your life easier, so please, don’t hesitate to ask us for anything.” It was civilized and appropriate, not only the speech but the attention with which the orchestra listened; Sir Simon said a few words about the Bartok, that they would attacca the second movement “…but for you, no problem…,” and they were off.

The first thing that struck me was the degree to which the orchestra was able to play pianissimo and still be one solid texture. The opening moment of the first movement of Music for Percussion, Strings and Celeste begins with the softest of fugal statements played by each section of the orchestra, and even at that time of day, when half of the members were not fully awake, the sound was lush, full—and almost imperceptibly quiet.

I’ve heard the piece many times, and played it several more, but I felt I was able to hear it for the first time that day as an entire structure. The first movement takes on the form of a long crescendo and a shorter decrescendo, something like a horizontal diamond, and this larger form was not just possibly observable—it was undeniable. At the climax of the movement, I turned to Francisco. “Can you feel it?” I asked my friend. “The ground is shaking even out here from the bassi.” We could feel the music shaking the ground.
Sir Simon did not interrupt very often, and for the most part simply ran through the movements, but when he stopped, it was always with something important to change. The second movement involves a good deal of pizzicato, and he paused at a transitional passage. “I like all of these tempi very much, and I will follow any one of them, but only one,” he said, and the next time through, everyone was listening as if with radar. Somehow just reminding the orchestra to listen allowed the music to flow. But the fact that he had offered to follow the orchestra, rather than to lead it, was striking: clearly, something different was happening on that stage.

From his two small comments a mutual relationship of deep respect was apparent. Every once in a while, a player would approach him at the stand and ask a question. He most usually nodded his head, flipped incredibly rapidly through his score, found the part in question, and gave his opinion. Both players and conductor usually smiled the whole time, and they seemed more like fellow architects going over a blueprint than like musicians discussing a fine point. This in itself was interesting; I had usually observed conductors, even ones that work regularly with a given orchestra, needing to prove their dominance, keeping players reprimanded as a matter of course, giving musical examples to prove their knowledge, singing parts in solfège purely to demonstrate that they knew everyone’s parts. All of a sudden, those tactics seemed incredibly silly.

In the fourth movement, Simon began picking apart the rhythm, focusing on the smallest minutiae, working the orchestra hard. I had turned to Francisco several times in a frenzy over something I had heard—some rich harmony or a musical gesture I had never heard before—and he turned to me and said, “yes, but right now they are sleeping. When this animal emerges from slumber, its voice is transcendental.” Simon asked the violins to use more bow, and all of a sudden the canvas of the piece opened up; with one comment, he had shifted the timbre, the tempo, the texture, the color. With every comment, I wondered if he were not merely getting their minds working again. Unable to resist the temptation, I began writing in my notebook. I wrote: he is, in effect, re-building his instrument with this rehearsal, something like constructing a new stage set in this foreign city, brushing off the cobwebs.

In between each piece there was a decent break of ten or twenty minutes, and during this time Francisco introduced me to several players, all of whom he had known in Lucerne. He pointed out Albrecht Mayer, a very young oboist who came in during the Bartok wearing a very large red shirt. “He,” Francisco said, “is out of this world.”

For the second piece, the Beethoven Pastoral symphony, we moved up to the first tier boxes. We found that the only doors open were those directly over the stage: the best seats in the house. From that vantage point, we could see Simon’s face clearly, could see every instrument, and best of all, sitting next to me was a conductor with a score which she allowed me to follow. Every time I saw an oboe entrance coming up, I would cue Francisco, and he would lean over to watch Albrecht Mayer. It was amazing to hear. The american oboe sound is entirely different from that of Germany, or of Europe. I had heard of this many times, but I could hear, in his sound, a more biting, nasal quality that still sounded so rich, at times, that I had trouble once or twice distinguishing it from the clarinet. From those box seats, in fact, all of the woodwinds came to life; they seemed to float up to us unimpeded by the stage and we could hear every nuance.

The brass, meanwhile, were of course not doing much; they aren’t used for quite some time in the second movement. But instead of looking bored, or reading a newspaper or checking their email, as I’ve so often seen, the players were actively discussing the score, pointing and writing things in and obviously listening carefully to the rehearsal. They seemed invested in the music; they were part of a whole, not just the hired guns or mercenaries that came in from time to time and cut through the texture.

Once again, the form of the piece was transparent, and I began to wonder if perhaps it was because the players themselves were more aware of the form. Each gesture seemed to have not just its own integrity but a particular context in which it functioned. The storm scenes evolved slowly but inevitably; the orchestra grew together, not in fits and starts, but all like a school of fish, responding at the same time to move in a new direction of one accord. It was really like this watching them: it was hard to determine the origin of the change, and they moved as one body, seemingly with one shared consciousness.

At one point in the second movement Maestro Rattle jumped off the stage and walked to the back of the hall. The orchestra continued along just fine, of course, and when Simon came back he did not stop them for several minutes. When he did, he mentioned that from the hall, the strings were able to overpower too easily the woodwinds. “It is a very friendly hall for the strings,” he said, “and it is too easy to lose the wind entrances. It is especially friendly to the high strings—it is lovely how it blooms—but if we are not careful you can bury the celli-bass.” Several violinists said, “well, good!” and everyone laughed a bit, and they continued on, but from that moment forward, the strings were universally aware of the wind entrances and always allowed them their space.

Later on, in the third movement, Simon stopped the orchestra to say “we have to find a new color for our pianissimo. Right now it is just a beautiful piano, but it could be much more.” Francisco turned to me, his eyes excited. “Did you hear that?” he asked. “In this orchestra, it is not enough to be simply beautiful; it has to go beyond that.”

After the Beethoven, Francisco wanted to go downstairs, and I was forced to decide whether to stay, though I knew no one there, or to follow him out and have lunch with him and a violist named Martin Stegner. It was not a very important decision, on the surface, and I thought I might as well see them off and head back to work, to get practicing, because the day had been overwhelming already and I was swimming in the music. But something at the pit of my stomach made me stay, and I ended up shaking hands with him there. We’re good friends, and I knew it wouldn’t matter to him if I stayed or not. For me, though, it was the opportunity to prolong the ultimate fantasy: I was inside Carnegie Hall listening to the Berlin Philharmonic, and I could sit anywhere I wanted to.

I stayed exactly where I was. The next piece was Ligeti’s violin concerto, and while we didn’t have programs, one of the women in the box was a violinist and recognized the soloist, Tasmin Little, who was warming up at the top of the stage. “That would be wonderful,” Maria, the woman in our box, said, looking at the soloist and where she stood. At that point, it was just the three of us there, looking over the orchestra. No one looked up or acknowledged that we were there, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that we were receiving a private performance. Throughout the rest of the hall there were perhaps ten other people, all of them scattered along the orchestra.
The Ligeti was even more fascinating than the other pieces because I didn’t know it as well and because it showed the orchestra in a completely different light. While most orchestras seem to treat new music as a necessary burden to bear, a chore to get through as best as possible, the BP had obviously made the piece their own. The percussionists looked at each other frequently and checked up on how they were doing; after a good passage, they would smile at each other and laugh; after a poor execution, they would exchange a look acknowledging it. Simon kept the mood light through the piece, at times mentioning casually that at certain points the only way they could get through the piece was to follow him. “And I know you all don’t believe it, but I can be clear sometimes if you will just let me.”
When the rehearsal was finished, Simon told the players, “go with joy until I see you tonight,” and everyone split to different directions. I was famished, and asked the girls if they might want to get some lunch. They said they would, but they wanted to thank the percussionist, Franz Schnindlbeck, who had let them in that morning. So we waited backstage, smiling involuntarily at the players. I was of a mind to leave the building, but on our way out we fell into a conversation with one of the horn players, Fergus McWilliam. “wait here a minute,” he said, and disappeared backstage. We went out in the air, unsure whether to stay or leave, and once again I felt the pit of my stomach tell me to stay, even though I intellectually knew I had to get back home if I were to get any writing done that day. I simply couldn’t leave.

Eventually Fergus came out, and I tried to make an excuse to go home, but he would have nothing of it. “I’ve got a break from now until four. Let’s all get Japanese food,” he said, and so we did. Witihin a few minutes, we were seated on tatami mats with our shoes off trying to decide what to order. Fergus told us that he had seen us all from the orchestra. “We all saw you up there, and we were struck by how intently you were listening. It was an amazing feeling to play for a near empty hall and have it feel like a real performance,” he said, “and we wanted to let you know we appreciated the focus you gave to the music.”

“You know,” he said, “we were all your age once, with impossible dreams and crazy fantasies. What is so remarkable about this orchestra is that we have all realized those dreams. We’ve all made it.” We listened over our sushi and miso soup to Fergus talk about the process that the orchestra has developed to become what it was.

It is largely the legacy, he says; he knows some very old subscribers in Berlin who have been coming to see the orchestra since Furtwängler, and they insist that everything that Karajan is famous for developing was already in the orchestra, the sound, the intensity. And he told us what it was like to play under Karajan, under Abbado, under Rattle. “You see that there are no clear beats in Rattle,” he said, “but it has always been this way, from the beginning. You can’t beat time for the Berlin Philharmonic: they’ll take you apart. You have to let the orchestra play itself, and the analogy I always use is that of a traffic cop. This one person stands in the middle of a dangerous intersection, and everyone obeys him or her because they know that if they don’t, they put their life on the line. There are conductors that think their purpose is to be taskmasters in rehearsal and then they just beat time for the performance. Those conductors never work for Berlin. What you need is someone who will let the orchestra play itself, listen to each other. Abbado used to say, ‘don’t you hear it?’ and everyone would listen for what he was hearing. He developed the sense of communication you see in the orchestra today, this way of listening to each other through the sections.

“But you see also what comes along with that: a very perceptive orchestra is also very noisy. We are always having discussions with each other. One famous story is that when Abbado was conducting a rehearsal, he put his baton out and gave a down beat, and no one came in. They were all talking between themselves. ‘You hear that?’ he asked them. ‘That is the sound that a conductor makes.’ Simon when he first came in was shocked by the way we talked. He would raise his hand and say, ‘excuse me—can I offer a suggestion here?’ Now he knows how to politely make a comment, and we will take it within a section, talk it over and say, ‘yes, this is a good idea. We will do this.’
“It may seem that we are a group that has a very good time, and we do, when we are not working. But we need to relax, to take a break, because we work incredibly hard. We challenge each other constantly, and we work this hard because for us hard work is fun.”
I interrupted at one point: he was talking about how wonderful it was to see us excited about the orchestra, and I said, “for me the sparkle of the music is in the consciousness of the musicians.” It had struck me that the musicians not only listened to each other, they each thought deeply about what the music meant, on many levels. Fergus confirmed this; he said that in the entire orchestra, only fifteen members were not conductors of some sort in their own right.

We all parted ways shortly before four, having sat on the tatami for several hours. We vowed to see each other every day for the rest of the week, though I wasn’t sure I could come back; I have class on Thursday mornings, and I felt conflicted about missing it. That night, though, I couldn’t sleep. The images of the day kept flashing through my mind: Rattle in his white turtleneck conducting Beethoven, the feeling of the red velvet in the box, the smiles of the percussionists playing Ligeti, the way Simon said, “go with joy until we meet again.” A musical world had opened up to me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The next morning I was there at a quarter to ten with no way to get into the hall. Outside the stage entrance I saw a number of people talking, smoking cigarettes. I decided to walk in, to answer only those questions posed to me. No one stopped me, and soon I was in the hall. I went straight to the tier boxes, and met Fergus on the way. “They’re on the other side,” he said. “Same place, over the stage, but the other side.” As I walked to box 1, I whispered to myself, unable to control the excitement, “I’m in!”

The second day featured Haydn. I had heard that Berlin sells out regularly, but when they play Haydn, it is impossible to find a seat. Shortly into the first symphony on the program, No. 88 in G major, it was clear why. The music came alive, the unexpected turns always surprising and exciting. I am interested in historical performance, and I was shocked at how many of the period-instrument techniques the orchestra had assimilated. The flutes used an alternate Grenadilla wooden flute to warm up the sound; the phrasing was all superb, the notes light off the bow, not too heavy, all with a nimble, confident nature that I’ve never heard an orchestra accomplish. The oboist and flutist actually improvised the repeated Minuet sections: this was music!

Most of the excitement came during the rehearsal. Rattle said, “this is fine, but everyone is going like this,” and he showed a bow going always the same, back and forth. “Let’s try to be more interesting than that.” And from then on, the articulations of the bowings was perhaps what most impressed me; no two notes were alike, and the sections were almost buzzing with the interactions going on between players of how to play certain passages. Some were curt and concise, and others were flitting, others very legato, but they all sounded different, and made the symphony exciting to listen to. Rattle is known as a Haydn specialist, and the rehearsal showed why: he seemed entirely in his element, as if his calling on the planet is to realize the music’s ultimate potential.

After a brief break was Debussy’s La Mer. If the rest of the rehearsals had been wonderful, this was on an entirely different level. From the box seats, the music seemed almost deafening at times. At the dramatic entrance of the cellos that sweeps high on the A string, the 1st principal cellist was asking about a timbrical nuance. “I don’t know,” Rattle said. “I’m accustomed to cellists being nervous about that move, but you seem to have no fear.” The cellist merely smiled and shook his head. The solos were all exquisite, each wind player making the music individually expressive. It really felt like chamber music.

There seemed to be a significant problem with the harps matching the basses’ very forward-moving tempo, and Rattle said, “we’ll move you for tonight so you can be side by side and hear each other.” But the problem persisted and he decided to move the instruments. This took at least fifteen minutes, but he was nonplussed. It was a necessary move, it seemed. They rehearsed the section again, and the instruments were still sharply divided, the bassi taking a faster the tempo, the harps a slower one. But Simon didn’t go back over it; he knew that the musicians would work it out in the performance.

At the end of the first movement, De l’aube a midi sur la mer, there is an enormous swell, and for more than a minute, the music sweeps up into a wave, a wall of sound. It was at this moment that I started to weep. The music had overpowered me, the orchestra which had won me over now caused me to shake. I let my head fall back, opened my eyes to a blurry circle of lights on the white ceiling, the musicians pausing between movements. I wondered if these were tears of joy, or of grief, of inspiration or of emotion. I do not know. But it was at that point that I began to wonder if I was going to come back to these rehearsals at every opportunity, that I would be back that night if I could, the next day, the next night. It had ceased to be a choice, and now seemed merely a fate. Could I avoid it? I attempted to avoid it; I tried to leave before the Dutilleux, to catch the last hour of class. I said goodbye to Fergus, to Maria and Elise, and made it as far as the door before I stopped in my tracks.

Am I going to leave this? Am I going to leave Carnegie Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic playing the United States premier of Dutilleux? I could not. A minute later, I was back in the box, sitting beside Fergus and Maria once more. “I couldn’t leave,” I told him. “Maria can’t leave, either,” Fergus said. “She has a class and can’t get herself to go to it.”

Henri Dutilleux, it so happened, was in the audience. And after Simon introduced Valdine Anderson (“we are ridiculously grateful and honored and humbled to have with us”), Fergus began to smile. “I love this piece,” he said, and with that thought, they began to play it. At first the language didn’t make sense; I was unaccustomed to his sense of timbre, the way that he worked with sounds. But after hearing the piece twice, it began to fall into place. I was once again grateful to be in rehearsal, where a few pitches were corrected, where I could hear the piece played several times in order to get a chance to hear it more than once, to get used to the new techniques. Fergus couldn’t stop raving about the piece, and it kept my attention riveted. “Valdine only gets this one rehearsal,” he told us. “Just this, that you are seeing, and she is on tonight.”

After she sang, Dutilleux approached the stage. It was moving to see this man, 87 years old, having finished only this year this great work for orchestra that had been commissioned more than ten years previous. “We were afraid he was going to die before he finished it,” Fergus said. “Thank God he didn’t, because it is a masterpiece. Every note, every sound is there for a reason, and one cannot imagine it being anywhere else. It is genius.” If I make it to 87, I thought to myself, and live to see my great work played by the Berlin Philharmonic…

The final piece was another Haydn symphony, No. 90 in C major, and the rehearsal was very brief. Rattle touched some spots, but left most of the music for the evening. Everyone wanted to go to lunch, and the hard work had been done.

That afternoon I came home and wrote for several hours, then tried to change my appointment for the evening. It was impossible to do so, and so I missed the performance. I thought that perhaps I was done, that perhaps my premonition during La Mer was over-blown, that I would after all be able to go on with my life. But that night, after checking the message machine, I couldn’t sleep once more. The night previous (Wednesday) I had slept perhaps three hours; that evening I couldn’t have been asleep more than a single hour. I finally fell into dreams at seven a.m., and by eight, I was waiting for the alarm to sound. It was like Christmas morning as a young child: the time seemed to stand still, the covers still warm, the room cold, and the prospects for the day overwhelmingly exciting.

I was still nervous going in the stage entrance. The possibility of not getting in seemed just as real this time as before, but as it turned out, it was even easier that day than on Thursday. When I entered the hall, it became clear why. There were some hundred-odd Manhattan School of Music students in the seats, almost all of them in the orchestra. I went to the tiers and saw Maria and Elise, smiled and sat down. That morning, they began from the back of the program, with the Schubert “Great.”

Halfway through the symphony, students started to swarm into the boxes. I felt violated, like something had been taken away. I retreated to the orchestra section, sitting alone. I calmed down; I realized I had been conflicted all along about the nature of the rehearsals. They were too good to be true: to be virtually alone in that hall had been the stuff of dreams. Why should I not desire that many others, other students, other composers, conductors, instrumentalists, get to witness that miracle? Of course, it was better this way. There was something unfair about the scarcity of people in the audience before, knowing that the seats were all sold out and that there would be standing room only for hundreds that evening.

With the new crowd, however, the rehearsal took on a new character. It was not quite so intimate, and Simon seemed to be more on stage than he had before, more conscious of the fact that people were watching, perhaps especially that students were watching. Nothing in essence changed, but the pacing was different. He moved things along quicker, and less time was spent between sections for discussion. A doubling between solo cello and oboe was particularly poignant, but for the most part I sat quietly drinking in the scene again, the unfathomable richness of the seats, the orchestra, the calm direction of Simon Rattle, the masterful compositions.
For the Sibelius, I decided to climb up as far as I could go. I had mentioned the experience I had been having to several people, half hoping they would try to come along, half hoping they would not, and a good friend of mine told me that his favorite place to sit was way at the very top of the hall, far away from the stage, where the sound has spent the most time in the hall, getting richer, it seemed, by the foot.

There were painters working up there, and they would not let me to the Balcony, which is the very highest section of seats, but they did allow me to sit first row dead center of the Dress Circle. From that height, the seats down below were dizzying, distant, and Simon seemed small compared to the enormous orchestra with its fourteen brass and eight bassi. I found that the sound of the low strings was much more perceptible than down below; details of bow-strokes were much more present, and the winds were even richer than before, seeming to be amplified compared to the strings. Again, the oboe cut through it all more than any other instrument. The brass were a soft pillow, and throughout the symphony I was struck by the elastic nature of the music, the pulling and stretching of chords to their peak, letting the horns enter on a pad of suspended strings. It was truly tactile to hear that symphony from way up on high.
From that far away, I could not hear Simon at all, and I found some calm and peace, far removed from anyone else. I wrote in my notebook, how vivid the sound is up here! It seems to only bloom more and more as it rises higher… I began to imagine the sound in the center of the hall as if it were a substance, like a bird rising in the air, or a mixture of fragrances. I imagined being able to live in that air in the hall, being able to hover there as the sound surrounded me. It was not hard to imagine, being so close to the edge, the music in my ears like a watery substance.

When it came time for the Goebbels, what was to be the first piece on the program that evening, I was treating it as my last moments in the hall. The music was fascinating, with a synthesizer on stage and a series of different textures demarcated by a piano chord that defined the sections easily. Sounds emerged from the orchestra that were innovative, exciting, and that matched the caliber of the orchestra. Should I try to come back tonight?

I had the vague notion of coming back that evening, but I didn’t know who I would talk to, whether it would be possible to ask an orchestra member to help me through the back door. Somehow it didn’t seem likely, and I didn’t anticipate being able to get out of my Friday appointment, either. I had promised friends I was going to go to a dance with traditional Serbian music, and I didn’t think I could turn it down. So for every moment of the last piece, I tried to drink it all in again, the ceiling, the walls, the impossibly rich sound, all the faces of the audience lit up with excitement watching this magnificent orchestra play.

I was sitting hundreds of feet above the theater, with the red sumptuous velvet of Carnegie Hall, my writing notebook beside me, an orchestra on stage that had taken control of my life, that had left me breathless and unable to think. This time is not my own, I wrote. For the past three days, I had not slept, I had not been able to think of any of my projects, my compositions, letters to write, homework, books to read, phone calls to make. Even now, trying desperately to find a way to portray this feeling in writing (a hopeless task!), I am unable to move forward in my life; I stay up late, I skip meals. Really it is about the music, I wrote. To be alone with the music in the hall is what makes the magic.

I saw the two flutes hit a fast run in perfect unison, so synchronized that they turned to each other afterwards as if to say, “did that just happen?” I watched the man who yesterday was sitting concertmaster sitting in the back of the 1st violins, content in his new role. This orchestra is filled with young people and with life, I wrote. They have so many innovative ideas, they bring the music to a place I did not know existed.

My friends had asked me the day before, “Did you tell Simon what you thought?” I had not, of course: why would he need to hear about another young person crazy about the orchestra? But then I thought of my own performances, and how meaningful it was when someone actually said something, instead of “I really loved your playing.” I had been transformed by the orchestra; it had turned something inside of me, given me a sense of hope that had withered, and I thought that he might appreciate knowing that. “Can I write you a letter?” I thought of asking as I made my way down the seven staircases.

Down on the orchestra level, Simon was giving a small motivational speech to the Manhattan students. “Don’t give up, and always remember your dreams,” he was saying. I waited for him at the back of the stage, by the door. He was talking to first this student, then the other, and each of whom when they approached him seemed to forget promptly what they were going to say. He would say something smart, shake their hand, and then he would move on, smiling the while, his hair impossibly silver. Would I lose my ability to speak in the same way?

I spoke to the photographer, who said that he had taken some pictures of me watching the orchestra. Would I like to have a copy? Of course, I said, trying to think of a time when he had been in the 1st tier box at the same time as me. I hoped that it was the Debussy, or perhaps it might have been during the Dutilleux?
And then he was walking towards us, and then he was past us, six or seven conductors pushing each other aside to say something—anything—to him. I didn’t want to be aggressive, but I stood my ground, walked around the fighting bunch, and after he made his move to the elevator, I said, “Sir Simon, I just wanted to thank you.” He turned to me, and I said, in a heartbeat, not thinking of anything at all, “you have revived my faith in music and the orchestra.”

He looked at me, at my eyes, and said, tossing over his shoulder a big smile, “Oh! Well thank you for telling me that. At least they are friendly!” And he was gone, and I was out the door, wondering to myself, did I say what I wanted to say? Yes, and it is true. My faith in music, in the power of music to affect and inspire, my faith in the orchestra to be the zenith of musical expression, of a conductor’s ability to direct and motivate, not to stifle, all of these things were reborn in me. Did it matter to him that I had said this? I wasn’t sure. Whether it did or not, I felt I had been honest.

That night, I caught a ride downtown to go to the Serbian dance. On the highway on our way, I thought about how I had been looking forward to this night for months, for this trio of musicians, the excitement of dancing with dozens of young Serbs, how it feels to have Croats come and dance alongside the Serbs in this small hall on the East Side, how this mingling of cultures made me feel alive, to dance alongside both of them, everyone singing, these songs the only vestiges of a time when Yugoslavia was something more than a precarious idea.

Now, I felt that sink in my stomach. “Could you drop me by the train,” I heard myself say. “I think I have to go back to Carnegie Hall.” I didn’t have a ticket, the concert had been sold out for months, and it was the final night. What were my chances of getting in? I didn’t really care. If I didn’t get in, I said to myself, I would just walk through the night a while. It had been an amazing week, come what may, and it only seemed appropriate to give it a try.

As I walked down 57th Street, my body was shaking, my jaw chattering loudly. I felt freezing cold, though I usually stay quite warm no matter the temperature. I felt like a junkie, like someone so addicted to something that the absence of it makes one shake. Am I addicted to this orchestra? I thought to myself. Perhaps so.

Approaching the hall, I was asked for tickets. “Sir, do you have a ticket?” “No,” I said, “I’m looking for one myself.” There were teams of scalpers, dozens of people asking aggressively, “do you have a ticket?” “Ticket, anyone?” “Extra tickets?” I didn’t have anything else to say, but I had to try, so I too asked someone who seemed likely to have several tickets. “Excuse me, ma’am, but do you happen to have an extra ticket?” “I am sorry,” she said sincerely. “I really wish I did. They are a wonderful orchestra.”

I tried again. “Excuse me, sir, I’m sorry to bother you. I was wondering if you happened to have an extra ticket.” “I’m sorry,” he said, and I turned away. Then he caught me by the eye. “Hold on a second,” he said, and motioned me over. “I’m not positive I have one, but if you wait here for ten minutes or so, I can tell you conclusively.” We began to converse, and I found myself talking rapidly about the week, about coming every day to rehearsals, about how I couldn’t resist the urge to come back. How the orchestra had changed my life, how I didn’t actually think I would be able to get in. He told me about the subscription series at Carnegie, how he used the music at that hall as his therapy. “Instead of going to a shrink, I go to Carnegie Hall. I always leave feeling healed in some way.”

The man I was speaking to was Carlos P–– an executive with Deutsche Bank, the corporation that had sponsored the Berliner’s tour and who were listed in the program as the vitalizing force behind the recent innovations of the orchestra. He pointed out to me several significant donors to Carnegie Hall which, he said, runs with a budget including 16% funding by the patrons, significantly more than the Met, which is funded only 10% by patrons. “That man,” he said showing me someone walking confidently through the door, “donated more than $30 million last year.” My jaw dropped. The sumptuous experience of the week began to take on a different shape. An unfathomable commitment to this building began to take shape, the reality of what is required to keep this musical heaven alive. “What philanthropy!” I said to myself.

We spoke about Venezuela and composing and many other things, and in a few minutes, he received a phone call. Afterwards, he turned to me and said, “Alright. It is settled. This is yours,” and here he handed me a ticket. “Come by at intermission to the Shoron Club. Do you know where this is?” I shook my head, trying to picture a club. He told me where it was, introduced me to a few friends, and I walked in the door, still clutching the ticket, somewhat frightened to look at it. Finally, I did: it was a first tier box seat: 19, 7. I couldn’t believe it: the first tier: the best seats in the house!

Soon it became clear what a box really was: a world unto itself. I was in a box filled with executives from the Deutsche Bank. We all met, shook hands, and took our seats. I gazed around me at the changed hall. It was absolutely filled with people. Every seat was taken, and there were people standing in the balcony all around the perimeter. Programs fluttered white, opening and closing, and the orchestra section was a blur of moving heads, talking to each other.

The first piece was the Goebbels, and I couldn’t contain my excitement, telling those around me what a treat we were in for. There was a sense of energy building, the hall looking expectantly at the stage as the lights dimmed, and out came Sir Simon Rattle. When he got to the podium, he turned around. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “This is terribly embarrassing. They have forgotten my score.” And he turned to walk off. People turned to each other with glee, the moment giddy with a shared sense of absurdity. Here, at Carnegie Hall, for the stage-hands to forget his score-it was a ridiculous idea!

Aus einem Tagebuch, Goebbels’ commission from the Berlin Philharmonic, opens with the sound of tam-tams, like the beginning of a Chinese opera. I watched the faces around me, how surprised they looked, how calm and patient they appeared. They were ready to listen to the entire piece before placing judgment. I turned my attention fully to the music, which seemed to become even more transparent, this third or fourth listening. The sections were obviously demarcated, and each one was a rich experience, always unexpected but logical. The synthesizer took on a larger role for me then, with the sounds of huge machines crunching giving the piece the drive that I had noticed (but could not identify) previously.

The sound of the hall didn’t lose any warmth with the thousands of people; it just became clearer. And the music itself became communication. What had before been a private discussion within the orchestra was now presented on a platter to the audience. The orchestra played generously, holding nothing back, internally communicative, without a doubt, but focusing most of their attention on communicating with the audience. It was spectacular, and once again on a higher level than what I had seen before. I took mental notes throughout the program, listing to myself the fascinating compositional techniques being employed, allowing myself to become lost in a reverie from time to time, looking around at the hall, as I did during the Sibelius, looking openly at the attentive faces turned to the stage and lit by the stage lights, every seat filled with another person having the same experience as was I. Or perhaps not! Perhaps their experience was entirely different, for not having been at the rehearsals. Maybe they were hungry, or bored, or maybe they were thinking about work. That is part of the beauty of music: that we share a moment, a time, an experience of sound–but we each process it differently, and we each have our own experience.

Near the end of the final movement, Sibelius sets up a moment that seemed to me the fulcrum upon which rests the piece: strings suspend, getting longer and longer in their chords. They crescendo, then fall to silence, a grand pause. Soon they soar again, only to fall to silence. Again the same, and then they grow, swell, grow, and the trombones enter, open fifths creating the chord, swelling, a moment of beauty, a cactus flower, and then it fades. This moment had struck me that afternoon, way up high in the Dress Circle, but it only made sense that night, with all of those people around. That moment of beauty, that elaborate preparation, seemed to me this whole experience: a brief moment shared, a minute of ecstasy.

At intermission, I made my way to the Shoron club, met Mr. P–– and was introduced to his wife, to several young Manhattan students that he and others had facilitated getting to the school, to several more Deutsche Bank employees, and to a conductor. It was a swirl of faces and hands to shake, and quickly we were ushered back to our seats.
It seemed only moments before the Schubert was begun and finished, the music so transparent and enjoyable, the sound so satisfying and rich. The orchestra seemed to be saying, “this is what we are here to do. This is easy, delightful: we are here to make music.” Simon Rattle used the most graceful gestures: at a shift in color or tonality, he would turn over his wrists, let the music shift of its own accord, his hands evoking the shift, not forcing it. By the end, we were tired from the effort of concentrating, but not drained; everyone seemed to step lighter as we left and went into the sea of bodies.
I made myself down to the base of the stage, knowing that now, truly, was my final moment in this week-long adventure, that I had had the perfect ending to a perfect week. I looked up at the empty seats, at the hall how it appeared familiar to me now, a building as miraculous as the music that was made on its stage.

As I left, I helped an old woman down the stairs, looking around for Mr. P––, or any of his party, wanting to thank him again for that evening, but unable to find him, I stepped out into the night air. What had seemed cold and had made me shiver now was merely refreshing, and the wind that had chilled my bones on the way to the hall merely fanned an internal fire. I stopped mid-stride and wrote, now the night is not so cold; music warms my bones.

When a concert changes one’s life, it is not larger circles of life that shift, not the shape of the buildings or the direction of one’s life, but the very small circles, the inner gears themselves. The air feels different, the sky less cold, one’s heart a different timbre. Using the lessons learned from falling in love, one knows one need not shout the moment to the stars, open one’s lungs to the night. Instead, there is a quiet reserve that has been filled, and with each breath it seems possible to feel once again the velvet, hear again the tangible silence of three thousand people waiting for the first sound to emerge, almost to see once again the sound as it blooms in the air, matures, explodes and dies in ecstasy upon one’s ears.

New York, 2003

Watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech two weeks ago, I felt like I was a part of something great, something important in the history of this country. Hearing him speak, watching him in a stadium of 82,000 people, speaking live in front of what-40 million viewers, I felt like we were a part of a speech that was every bit as eloquent, sincere, profound, daring, and prophetic as those of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in the late 60s. Those speeches, which I used to watch and feel like there was no one who could speak like that anymore-those speeches are now something we’re a part of. Because Barack is on that level. He’s that kind of leader.

The “Media Cycle” has fallen completely for the tabloid news of McCain’s running mate, but the real news is Obama. I was struck, during the speech, by his many references to being his brother’s keeper. Such as this one:

What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now.

In the view of Barack Obama’s view, the role of government is to be a caring sibling. And it began to dawn on me that he was contrasting McCain’s view with his own, and that McCain is-Cain, in the story of Cain and Abel.

Cain tills the fields; he is a farmer. Abel is a shepherd. After a period of time, they both produce offerings to God, but Abel’s is preferred. Cain becomes angry-and God tells him:
“Why are you so distressed,
and why is your face fallen?
Surely, if you do right,
There is uplift.
But if you do not do right,
sin couches at the door;
its urge is toward you,
yet you can be its master.”

But we know what happens next-Cain says, come, let’s go to the field, and kills his brother. And when God asks where his brother is, Cain says, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

This is interesting on many levels to me. First, that McCain’s name is so closely related to Cain. And second, that this attitude: become jelous, steal, rob, murder, and then deny it all, even to your own God, is a perfect metaphor for Republican policy. Unapologetically pillage from the poor, and then, when held accountable, deny it all.

The next part of the story is also interesting. God banishes Cain, and says that he will no longer till the soil in a fertile land-he will wander the earth. Cain says, but how will I be protected? And God tells him he will be protected. So, just as we find in our modern times, the murderer, the war criminal, is given a reprieve, while the poor serve jail time for petty crimes. In secret prisons, detainees are tortured and held without trial, but corporate crime is pardoned, companies that have committed financial crimes are floated by the government.

It is the government’s responsibility to help those in need. It is one of the measures of a successful society that they care for the poor and the widows. For McCain, for the republicans, the view is: It’s not my responsibility. I killed my brother, but am I my brother’s keeper?

What’s in a name? Fox News tried their level best to slander Barack because of his unusual name. But McCain’s name is damning: it represents him perfectly. Mc-for the McDonald-corrupt world we live in, and Cain, for his willingness to commit murder and absolve himself of all guilt. For his shameful change of policy on fundamental issues, like torture, like campaign finance reform. For shame, John McCain. For shame.

On the high wire August 7th, 1974

Considering this film: after thirty four years, Jean Louis breaking into sobbing tears as he remembers what happened after the walk. And also: his face as he recalls how Philippe looked on the wire, once he began his walk. Once the impossible struggle was over, and he was alone on the wire, nothing between him and death.

I have considered that moment thousands of times. Philippe talks about the first step: that the hardest part of an endeavor, artistic or otherwise, is committing to that first step. Where one foot is on firm ground, and the other one can bring death. Where we stand now, certainty. Where we step, the void, and infinity.

“It was the worst wire we ever made,” Jean Louis said. And there was no way to know if, when the towers swayed in the wind that day, they would pull the wire enough to snap the cable. There was nothing to say that the wind wouldn’t be hurricane-strength, or that lightning might not strike the cable. Or that Philippe, in looking down 1/4 of a mile to the ground, wouldn’t for a moment lose his fearlessness to heights, and develop vertigo. Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, explores the idea that vertigo is not the fear of falling, but the fear that comes with wanting to fall. That when you get close to the edge, something compels you to jump, something pulls you towards the edge.

I sang at the funeral of William Styron two years ago, and sat within whispering range of President Clinton, who spoke beautifully, and in a way that it felt like he was speaking to every one of us personally: he brought us in close. Many others spoke-Ted Kennedy among others, and e very one of the speakers-his daughter, the politicians, the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, all of them mentioned his account of his depression, and his successful emergence from it, Darkness Visible. I’m reading it now, and it is an act of courage that reminds me again of Philippe’s walk.

I’m reminded of the advice of a cellist friend of mine, who said that darkness and depression is a river that tempts us, as artists, to wade in, but we must resist this temptation. This is the same theme I was working with this Summer, as I wrote The White Goddess for Silvie Jensen (heroically performed this July in 110 degree heat at The Stone). In The White Goddess, Robert Graves describes how She is a three-form being, Virgin, Mother, and Crone; that she is the muse, but she can also be deadly. That her nests, when one comes across them in dreams, are lined with the entrails and jaw-bones of poets.

We invoke the muse, we pray to be inspired, but to dive in too deep to those waters of inspiration can kill of us. One is reminded of Dante, who invoked the muse to speak of his journey to the pit and back, with the help of a guide. I’m reminded of how we cannot go down there alone. Because divers get the bends; because when we venture into the infinite void on our own, we find the devil at our shoulder, like Jesus in the wilderness (really, the deserts to the West of the Dead Sea). Because the mind can, like the snake eating its own tail, spiral inwards with a black-hole-like strength, and become a self-perpetuating tail-spin that bores a hole straight down, into the depths.

Not so Philippe. Dancing above the void, dreaming with the sea-gulls, he flew, he soared above humanity. Nothing equals this achievement. Not Ussain Bolt’s perfection as he runs; not Michael Phelps in his superb focus and flight-like swimming. Philippe’s artistry was to show us that we can be alive, fully aware and alive, above the pit of death and despair. That death has no dominion; that the pure embodiment of inspiration reveals the height of humanity, which can soar above it all on the wings of impossibility. Why did he do it?

He says, there is no why. He did it because he had to.

The same reason we write, and play, and love. Because we have to. Knowing precisely and exactly what lies below that 1/4 inch wire, and walking anyway. Because we have to.

Then I consider the footage in the film of the towers going up. 1970, 1971. Ground breaking. The foundations being laid. The footprint of the towers visible, but there are no towers. It is finally, after seven years, a scene we can watch, and have enough emotional distance to see the parallel with the site now, which resembles this early footage to an eery degree, without losing sight of the footage itself, which is full of hope. The lower stories built, the steel beams like bones sticking up towards the sky. Looking like the weeks after. And finally, the buildings receiving their shiny outer verticality, that impossibly high verticality of parallel thin metal reaching towards the sky.

To Reach The Clouds, Philippe calls his book. Stretching towards the sky, the wire defining the space around itself as pure verticality. As we watch, this movie, this story reveals itself as a love story. The love between Philippe and the towers: this strange, compelling anthropromorphisation of these giant towers. We remember our love of the infinite, our love of stretching to explore the limits of our humanity. And the love that compels us to do so.

And I remember what Philippe told me in 2001, mid-September, when he came to speak at Oberlin. He said, the greatest message we can send after this destruction is to build them ‘as they were, where they were.’ Com’ era, dov’era.

The courageous purpose of Styron’s book is to provide a testament to those who suffer that depression is something that can be overcome. He says in Darkness Visible,  Men and women who have recovered from the disease–and they are countless–bear witness to what is probably its only saving grace: it is conquerable. For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world.” There whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder la stelle.

And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.