I've been searching for inspiration from everything these days, it seems. A few weeks ago I found myself watching - but hearing more -the lovely patchwork of a brand new opera, a work in process of Two Boys for the Met opera. It's unlike anything done before, and it's composer is thirty two. At the Q and A he seemed so consumed by his creativity that every nuance of his personality and physical mannerisms bursts forth in fits and starts. There's also a very real possibility that his frenetic genius is fueled as much by drugs as by some sort of divine enthusiasm for music... It's better though if his eccentricities are just genuine testaments to the fount of novelty he has to offer.
I think about how people manage to do old things in new ways a lot. I feel like that capacity is what generates the ever shifting landscape of our time. The newest inventions generate the most excitement and clamor ... such that the past's foundations are eclipsed and embarrassed. Then Life posits an old jazz legend - at whom I marvel for the front man career he's generated from an affinity for the standing base. His suit is older and ill fitting, but that's hardly his fault. I imagine his tall spider like frame is challenging to suitably drape. And then the way he plays his music and his eight piece, jazz band. My favorite thing is that his eyes are never open. Not even when he directs with his forceful index fingers. His ears though, I envy to imagine what his ears are hearing. From my meager experience all I know is that he and his friends have figured out the answer to some secret that melts away the stress of expectations and the decay of age. Somehow his hands are effortless, strong, and young, despite the overarching sense of fragility in his every move from the wrists up. And his all female cello chorus of four; they're old enough to be my grandmothers, but doing what they must love makes them smile so you see the giddy school girls they had to have been decades ago. You can't take their eyes of them, but still are only spectators to their bliss.
I imagine most people long for the ease of companionship and joy in one's work and colleagues that Robert Cole and his colleagues have mustered I certainly do. In the same moment I acknowledge the challenge of asking questions and searching for answers in performance is that while it is the sum total of hard work, it is by no means a full reflection of the obstacles that were overcome before the pinnacle could be reached. I remind myself of that reality in my teaching, practice makes improvements but not perfection. Sometimes imperfections are in fact vastly more useful to making progress with the human condition. I endeavor not to register so deeply that feeling of disappointment when I feel I wasn't able to get to that one child who seems to orbit outside my reach.
It's our lives as these orbiting bodies that I at times find so exhausting. There's good in it too; sometimes you bump into another one of those humanoid planets that frequent the streets and are pushed further along your own path, but then again, sometimes you're stymied and forced to a stop by forces seemingly beyond your will to bend or master. I suppose it's all in the service of progress.
