The Day the Music Died

This week the music died. Monday, we lost Pete Seeger. That night Frank Almond played a 300 year old Stradivarius Violin in the Milwaukee chamber orchestra. His performance was breath-taking according to the New York Times. The audience held its collective breath in awe for 20 seconds (count them 1..2…3…) before applauding. He walked out into the parking lot where he was mugged with a stun gun and the violin was stolen. It was a valuable instrument. “High 7 figures.” It was also insured. I imagine Mr. Almond takes about as much comfort from that fact as I do from knowing that Pete Seeger had a will. There are people and things whose impact on us is both intangible and tangible, transient and lingering. Sounds and voices that can be captured but not replicated. Not made whole again. So a bit of us dies. Pete Seeger the optimist, the dreamer with 2 feet planted in fertile soil.  

Here it is again...
"There is a Japanese word for things made more beautiful by use, that bear the evidence of their own making, or the individuating marks of time's passage: a kind of beauty not immune to time but imbedded in it."

 - Mark Doty, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

  *My apologies. This failed to post on February 3, 2014. But here it is.