Make Music INSPIRATION!

[Guest guest]

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give

a concert at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a

Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement

for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and has braces on both

legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.

To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and

slowly, is a sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he

reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the

floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends

the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts

it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play. By now,

the audience is used to this ritual.

They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair.

They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs.

They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went

wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his

violin broke. You could hear it snap -- it went off like gunfire across

the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant.

There was no mistaking what he had to do. People who were there that

night thought to themselves: " We figured that he would have to get up,

put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off

stage -- to either find another violin or else find

another string for this one, or wait for someone to bring him

another. " But he

didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled

the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he

played with such

passion and such power and such purity, as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work

with just three strings. I know that; you know that. But that night

Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, and recomposing the piece in his

head. At

one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new

sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then

people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause

from every corner of the auditorium. Everyone was on their feet,

screaming and cheering, doing everything they could to show how much

they appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his

brow, raised his bow to quiet the audience, and then he said, not

boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, " You know, sometimes

it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make

with what you have left. "

What a powerful line that is. And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of

life

-- not just for an artist but for all of us. Here is a man who has

prepared all his life to make music on a violin with four strings, who

all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only

three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings

was more beautiful,more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had

ever made before, when he had four strings.

So,perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in

which we

live, is to make music,at first with all that we have, and then, when

that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.