Sunday, April 03, 2005

Fields of pianos

I read somewhere that Jews couldn't flee the Nazi advancement in time because Jews had pianos. It's hard to pick a piano and run. They waited, and perhaps held a wild hopeful anticipation that the Nazis could never come. How could they, while there were these large, magnificent pianos that were hard to lift and run with?

I am not certain how truthful this story is - or whether this should elicit sympathy for the pianos and pianists, but there seems to be a "rationality" in the tale. At any rate, it's a good lesson about things that prevent us from running for life.

Armed with this insight, I took a brief look at my life. To my dismayed surprise, I heard the distinct music of many pianos playing. There are, I see, fields upon fields of of pianos harvested. Sometimes they grow, sometimes they stay in old attics of memory and play their ghost music on. The music is so lovely, so soulful - at times the simplest thing is easy to forget: we could play a piano if we survive. We cannot, if we await our death by the side of a piano.

Indeed, why have a piano at all? The best is the ability to create music, which is what makes a musician gifted and able and loved. Why love an instrument at the cost of the musician?

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