Shinny Eyes

Quite randomly today, while searching YouTube for some interesting content to investigate, I stumbled across a surprisingly engaging TED Talk video titled “The Transformative Power of Classical Music”, given by Benjamin Zander, a Classical conductor and music teacher and I admit to being quite blown away by it. Classical music is not a favorite medium of mine, in any way, but over the past few years I have learned to develop a genuine appreciation for it. Watching a world class violist, as I did last year, will do that to you. Yet while admitting to that, as a genre, I still don’t find it engaging enough to spend much time with and because of that, I nearly decided to skip past Zander’s talk to continue searching for something more aligned with my interests. But an intuition overruled that bias, so I spent a few minutes checking out what he had to say. And those few minutes absolutely made my day.

For his musical ‘lesson’, Zander centered the talk on a composition by Chopin, the beautiful “Prelude in E Minor” and as he broke the piece down to its core structure, he made a point that the main notes of the melody consisted of B, A, G, F and with the final note being an “E”, the homerun note, which would tie the whole composition together….but Chopin didn’t play that ‘E’ note right away, but instead waited until the composition had established its melodic narrative….because, as Zander stated, “a story had to be told first.”

Zander then pointed out that even Shakespeare wrestled with that very idea in Hamlet; the idea of constructing suspense along the story line by waiting to uncover that explanatory note.  For instance, when Hamlet learned that his uncle had killed his father early in the story, Shakespeare didn’t just write in Hamlet’s retribution immediate, because there was an intriguing psychological journey to be made first.

To continue that theme, Zander mentioned our need to SEE the long sweep of a story, implying that Chopin’s song can also be used as a poignant disposition for our own lives. He then mentioned traveling to South Africa and while flying above the country, considered what Nelson Mandela was thinking during those 27 years in prison, which apparently wasn’t the trivial issues self regard, or plotting his retribution on those who imprisoned him, but instead held the long view of how-to end Apartheid and bring freedom to his countrymen. Then Zander mentioned a wonderful analogy that hits the mark even more succinctly. He stated that geese migrating to warmer climates don’t bother themselves with all the fence lines and property boundaries that pass below but instead have the long view of their purpose.

That line of thought holds such a prescient instruction for how we should approach our own lives, because we all tend to be disproportionately burdened by countless intrusions on our time and attention. We so easily lose focus on the true scope and purpose of our time here and as a consequence, our default mode becomes reactionary and shortsighted.

Zander then mentioned that as a teacher, the way he could tell whether his lessons were hitting their mark was whether he could see shinny eyes among his students, which meant they were locked in and engaged on the music. He stated that he didn’t define his success in terms of money, position, or power, but only whether he saw shinny eyes.

To sum up his talk he then mentioned an encounter with an older woman who was a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp. She described being a young 13 year old girl crammed onto a German transport train heading for an unknown concentration camp along with her 8-year-old brother when she noticed that he was barefoot. She described to Zander how she scolded him for not paying attention enough to gather his shoes, which caused him to cry. As it turned out, rather cruelly, that was the last thing she ever said to him, because they were separated at the camp, and he did not survive.

She concluded her tale by stating that when she was eventually freed from the camp at the conclusion of the war, that she had to consciously “step back into life”, and the first vow she made toward that end was to never say another word unless it could stand on its own as the last thing she ever said. It was a powerful moment during Zander’s talk and immediately after describing such an anguished and tormented memory, Zander then sat at the piano and played Chopin’s poignant composition, this time the complete song with the concluding “E” chord, which brought a touching closure to the piece. I found it a hauntingly beautiful moment coming after hearing her story.

To finish this up, I am not suggesting that we keep the ‘long sweep of our story” as our primary focus, as if some distant finish line should be our sole objective, and certainly not at the exclusion of the daily life that is directly in front of us, here and now, but quite the opposite. Let me refocus for a second on our Holocaust survivors’ story by insisting that the ‘long sweep’ of our lives that is being inferred to by Zander is one of personhood, and not of vain ambitions and arbitrary goals. Just as she established a code of conduct for herself, a principle she vowed to never again violate, so we should also have a clear image of the person we want to become and set a course to reach it. Once that course has been mapped and our commitment firmly set, a freedom then arises that allows each day to be lived on its own terms, as a single, irretrievable gift along the way.