Calligraphy © Hassan Massoudy
François Mauriac.
WOKE up at an unearthly hour and had a lovely session at my friend’s church today, I like how honest and hospitable and humble and welcoming and genuine the people are, and I like being able to engage in a free-for-all about issues that are important, and I like the individuals very much.
“What were you talking about?”
“Oh, life, the universe, time, infinity, everything.”
The mystery at the heart of life. What is prayer, does it help? Or is it all some complicated psychological trick we’re playing on ourselves? How do we get truth from reading scripture? What happens when two truths collide? Why the talk about the Holy Spirit?
Instead of going to the Bible I’ve had my Rawls and Kant on the one hand and T.S. Eliot and poetry, poetry, poetry I love with all my heart on the other — truth and beauty, morality and life, grounding and spirit. And they’ve been with me for so long, and they still give me a great deal of comfort, will always point me home.
To me, music and dance, sculpture and painting are prayers. Art is prayer. If truth is that which lasts, then art has proved truer than any other human endeavour. What is certain is that pictures and poetry and music are not only marks in time but marks through time, of their own time and ours, not antique or historical, but living as they ever did, exuberantly, untired.
Against daily insignificance art recalls to us possible sublimity. It cannot do this if it is merely a reflection of actual life. Our real lives are elsewhere. Art finds them. I believe that art puts down its roots into the deepest hiding places of our nature and that its action is akin to the action of certain delving plants whose roots can penetrate far into the subsoil and unlock nutrients that would otherwise lie out of reach of shallower bedded plants.
“The opening night concert featured unaccompanied cello only. There on the great stage sat a single, solitary chair. No piano, no music stand, just a chair. Each performer played only one piece, so the atmosphere was charged with concentration and focus. If ever a chair could be called a hotseat, that was it.
The moment of a lifetime followed the performance by Yo Yo Ma. He played a piece called the Cellist of Sarajevo, written by a contemporary English composer named David Wilde. The program notes told the amazing story behind the piece:
On May 27th, 1992, a bakery in Sarajevo which happened to have a supply of flour was making bread and distributing it to the starving, war-shattered people. At 4 p.m., a long line stretched into the street. Suddenly, a shell fell directly into the middle of the line, killing 22 people outright and splattering blood and gore over the entire area.
A hundred yards away lived a 37-year-old man named Vedran Smailovic. Before the war he had been the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Opera Company — a distinguished and civilized job, no doubt. When he saw the massacre outside his window, he was pushed beyond his capacity to endure anymore. Driven by his anguish, he decided he had to take action, and so he did the only thing he could do. He made music. Every day there after, at 4pm precisely, Mr Smailovic would put on his full formal concert attire, and walk out of his apartment into the midst of the battle raging around him. He would place a little camp stool in the middle of the bomb-craters, and play a concert to the abandoned streets, while bombs dropped and bullets flew all around him. Day after day he made his unimaginably courageous stand for human dignity, for civilization, for compassion, and for peace. As though protected by a divine shield, he was never hurt, though his darkest hour came when, taking a little walk to stretch his legs, his cello was shelled and destroyed where he had been sitting.
The news wires picked up the story of the extraordinary man, sitting in his white tie and tails on a camp stool in the center of a raging, hellish war zone — playing his cello to the empty air. The composer David Wilde was so moved by the report that he wrote the piece which Yo Yo Ma played for us that evening.
Yo Yo sat down quietly on his little stool in his white tie and tails, and began. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, the music started, creating a shadowy, empty universe pervaded by the sense of death. Slowly, it built and grew into an agonized, screaming, slashing furor which gradually subsided back into a desolate death rattle — fading seamlessly back into silence.
When he finished, he remained bent over his cello, bow still resting on the strings. No one moved — we scarcely dared to breathe. We all felt that we had just witnessed that horrible scene ourselves. After a long period of absolute silence, Yo Yo slowly straightened in the his chair, looked into the audience and raised his hand. He beckoned someone to come to the stage — and we realized it was him — the cellist of Sarajevo himself! He rose from his seat and headed down the aisle as Yo Yo came off the stage and headed up the aisle to meet him. With arms flung wide, they met each other in a passionate embrace right at my chair. I simply couldn’t believe what was happening. At that point, everyone in the hall leaped to his feet in a chaotic emotional frenzy, clapping, weeping, shouting, embracing, cheering. It was deafening and overwhelming. And in the center of it all stood these two men, still hugging, both were crying. Yo Yo Ma, the suave, elegant prince of classical music worldwide, flawless in appearance and performance. And Vedran Smailovic, who had just escaped from Sarajevo, dressed in a tattered and stained leather motorcycle suit with fringe on the arms. His wild long hair and huge mustache framed a fact that look 80 years old — creased with pain and wet with so many tears. And this was the first time he had heard the piece. I stared at them, wanting to remember every single detail, so that one day I could describe it to my son, and say, “I was there”! And I thought of the audience — all the jewels and perfume and sophistication now completely meaningless and forgotten — all stripped down to the stakes, deepest humanity. What a triumph for us all. What a triumph for dignity and compassion. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony pales next to the emotion in that hall that night. And what a triumph for the cello! Here was a room filled with people whose lives had been largely devoted to that simple and unassuming instrument. Here were bowmakers, collectors, amateurs, historians, varnishers, and of course, the great master players. All come from all over the world to celebrate the cello together for a week. And here, on the first night, they encounter this man who shook cello in the face of bombs, death and ruin and defied them. It became the sword of Joan of Arc. It became the mightiest weapon of them all.
It’s because of experiences like this that I call music my magic carpet. A week later I was back playing for the residents of the Penobscot Nursing Home, where I’ve played a free concert/sing along every month for five years or so. And I realized it’s all the same. It’s the privilege, the blessing, and the solemn responsibility of all of us who make music; to try to make the world a tiny bit better each time we play.”
Smailovic played Albinoni’s moving Adagio in G minor. Perhaps he chose it because it was written using music found on a scrap of paper found in the ruins of Dresden after the second World War. The music had survived the firebombing of the concentration camps. Perhaps that is why he played it there in the scarred streets of Sarajevo. Something, he thought, must survive -– something must triumph over horror.
Vedran Smailovic played this piece on his cello amidst sniper fire and bombs falling around him. He played the same piece everyday at four o’clock for the next twenty-two days. One performance for each person who died.
