The Road / Cormac McCarthy

Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, don't you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
"To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." Joseph Chilton Pearce

"If you press me to tell why I loved him, I feel that this cannot be expressed,
except by answering: Because it was he, because it was I."
Michel de Montaigne, "Of Friendship"

Saturday, November 27, 2010

From my violin teacher

Dear Hannah,


I was delighted to hear from you and so sorry it took me such a long time to respond. I'm sure your senior year continues to be eventful. I hope playing is going well for you. You were a good student. If you ever want to come to Chicago for a single lesson, it would be fun to see you again. I really enjoyed working on the Bach and talking to you about literature. I've been reading Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" which is a lengthy undertaking but it is really good. Remarkable descriptive language. Wish I could read it in French. ...
From Myra Patterson's email to me, November 12, 2010

Reading this made me happy like a child. I had wondered, assumed, convinced myself that my email got lost in the middle and that she never received it. But here is the reply I've been secretly waiting for for almost three months! I admired Myra for all the musician, reader, philosopher, and genuinely good person she was (and still do)--she let me see that yes, it is absolutely possible that you possess, master, and teach multiple arts at the same time. From her I learned more than how to train my ear to the right pitch, but also how to breathe Bach, peruse Forster, and laugh at the meaningfully funny jokes she would tell me. I came to her expecting to learn the forte, the staccato, the A minor but she taught me more than the technical. 

She told me she had her first violin lesson when she was eighteen, which was ten years ago. Her maturity of music is what still strikes me; her 10 years of practice is definitely worth more than the necessary 10,000 hours. People thought she'd never make it, but she did. The judge at her audition later sold his prized viola to her (very cheaply)--he was probably blown-away impressed by her audacity and hard work, felt bad that he dismissed her at her first audition, when, the very next year he sat next to her in the orchestra). 

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