The Empty Bench

Recently I went to Strathmore Music Center in Rockville and heard Brian Ganz, an accomplished pianist, play a Chopin recital. Ganz played superbly and received a deserved ovation from the audience. As much as I enjoyed the concert, as smoothly as it all went, the few moments before the concert impressed me as well. Spontaneous generation doesn’t happen: everything springs from something else.

Ten minutes or so before the concert, people strolled casually down the aisles searching for their seats or reading the programs or scrutinizing their iPhones; small groups stood here and there chatting. I doubt anyone in the theater took note of the empty bench in front of the piano, which stood firmly in the center of the otherwise barren stage. These were no more than necessary props for the coming event. But not to me. I imagined that empty bench and the piano, still silent with its lid raised prepared for the music to escape, as a flag for ambition, effort, frustration, striving for perfection and personal accomplishment. The music to come would be effortless compared to the years of effort to occupy the bench and produce the music.

I thought of my father walking across the stage holding his cello high, looking confident, heading to the empty chair – the throne – that took a lifetime to fulfill its promise. I remember the jitters that plagued him before each concert, yet people seemed surprised that he would be nervous before playing music that he’d performed many times. I recall the butterflies that flitted in my stomach before every science lecture I ever gave, even to small groups, on research that I’d done for many years and knew better than anyone in the audience.

I took a picture of the empty bench and piano on the barren stage, waiting for Ganz and for the audience to notice.

The quiet before the storm is inseparable from the storm that unleashes its power.