Common wisdom might say, the truth is the the truth, facts are facts, and storytelling is storytelling. Yet, when we look again, we see something that we didn’t before, glimmers of new ideas spring from stone, fiction shifts to fact and facts shift to fiction. So much of who we are and how we see the world is on how we look at things. Yet, curiosity, empathy, ambition and countless other emotions drive us through the day, changing the perspective with which we view the world.
The Newest Musings
Seriously? Who Said That?!
My father, the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, told me once that every time he played for an audience, it was a performance, regardless of the circumstance or the composition and/or size of the audience. There’s no such thing as frivolous fun in public for a musician, he said, even if that public was limited to family and friends. In his eyes, everyone judged, everyone counted; no audience was impartial, ever, even if there was no immediate consequence of note. My father was a harsh critic, especially to himself, and surprisingly sensitive to criticism for a man of his professional stature. He felt that a single disparaging sentence or even phrase by a music critic in an otherwise favorable review was a damaging blow. I have seen him buy a stack of newspapers to prevent others from access to a personal review he disliked. Futile? Naturally, but it was an expression of pain, not logic. “It’s like a cat scratching my eyes out,” he’d say despondently. How he suffered! He told me once that when still a boy in Russia learning his instrument he soaked his hands in ice water before practicing [...]
