Hepzibah: Set the Piano Stool on Fire

I come across as pretty dark to a lot of my friends, but in my own mind, I'm seeking balance. I was raised in a religious tradition that insisted one was supposed to leave the world a better place than one found it. I left the religion, but the value stuck, and now I don’t think it was the religion that put that notion into my head at all, but the culture I grew up in, the same culture that generated the religion.

That looks and smells like a chicken-and-egg situation, so I’ll move on, except to say one effect of looking to make the world a better place is that you must necessarily focus on what’s wrong with the world if you’re going to fix it.

I remember a conversation I had once with my soul-mate Harriet, who died a quarter of a century ago now, in her 50s. One of those cruel events that bring you to your knees in despair and makes you seek ways of surviving the slings and arrows and tragedies life brings. We couldn't agree on a movie because she wanted comedy and I was in the mood for something heavier. “I don’t like serious movies,” she said. “If I’m going to pay for entertainment, I want entertainment that makes me laugh and feel better. I’ll take a comedy over a tragedy any day.”

I thought about that for a very long time. Why is it that I prefer movies with heavy themes, moral dilemmas, struggles to find the right way and to do the right thing? I concluded that when I saw comedy, I saw people escaping reality but when I viewed tragedy, on stage, in film or in literature, I could take comfort in the evidence it provided that people were paying attention. I was not alone. Others saw what was wrong with the world and were engaged in fixing it. People who talk of nothing but gloom and doom are not my kind of folk, but I almost prefer them to the bubbly cheerful folk who chatter on about how beautiful life is. Something in me worries they are covering up for some terrible tragedy in their lives. Some fear or insecurity they've got their head in the sand over.

I know - the Buddhists have taught me - that nothing in life is certain except change. And that means when things are good, they’re going to get bad again, and when things are bad, they’re going to get good again. From that fact, I conclude that it makes sense never to get too caught up in any particular moment. That doesn’t make me an optimist, but it doesn’t make me a pessimist either. So I can go on focusing on the ills of the world without worrying too much that I’m being unduly dark. I just need to be careful not to get trapped into thinking we’ve reached the end of the world.

When Notre Dame went up in flames in Paris, my response was to thank God for not existing. I'd have to hate him if he did. The Saudi war in Yemen is leading to countless starving children in that country; the tyranny in Syria is leading to an endless stream of refugees. The melting glaciers, the wild fires making the sky over San Francisco a bright orange, the surrender of Republicans to greed, self-interest and a willingness to remove both health care and a woman’s right to control her own body, rather than stick with the slow but steady process of extending human rights under the U.S. Constitution… all that is reason to despair. And the pandemic, the need to stay inside my house. Because I am told I have a terminal lung disease, and I need to stay inside my house and not even go to the grocery store, I sometimes wonder where I’m going to find the strength to get out of bed in the morning.

But I find it. And I find if I don’t eat sweets late at night I sleep better and wake with an appetite and that gets me up. I also wake with a feeling of gratitude as I look at the dog who chooses to sleep with me (I leave the door open, so I know it’s a choice) taking her half of the bed out of the middle. If I believed in a god, I’d thank him/her/it for the last ten years - even if he did burn down Notre Dame - for revealing to me, by means of our two half-chihuahua half-jack Russell Terrier daughters, that I have within me a tremendous capacity for love and compassion and desire to protect and nourish.

That gratitude and a healthy appetite still get me out of bed in the morning.

All this said, I also think you can’t just do nothing and let things happen as they will. You’ve got to generate an environment in which gratitude can come naturally. Since the lock-down started, I’ve taken to listening to more music than I ever did before. I’ve always been a music lover, but it has now become as essential as food and drink. I’m grateful for the girls. I’m also grateful for YouTube and my recently acquired BOSE speakers.

And for the evidence of miracles. Which is what I think I see when I find yet another child prodigy or yet another pianist who has just recorded all the Chopin Nocturnes, or Preludes, or the complete works of Beethoven.

Let me share with you my latest discovery. I’ve watched Aleksander Malofeev grow up and get better and better with each new year. I’ve watched the Norwegian singer Aksel Rykkvin’s voice change, and marveled that he had such good training that he has not lost the ability to astound audiences, as many boy sopranos do when their voices change. And yesterday I spent the day listening to and reading up on two musical geniuses who have found each other, the American Kit Armstrong and the Austrian Alfred Brendel.

I hope you can find the time to sit back and watch what happens with an old genius takes a young genius under his wing.

I can almost guarantee it will give you yet another reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

Watch the whole thing. It’s just over an hour and a quarter.

And tell me you don’t love to pieces a cute little guy whose response to the death of a favorite chicken is to play the Goldberg Variations.