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How My Mind Works
North Miami Beach, FL February 21, 2001 Aaron
H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then, Opinions pro or con are welcome.
HOW MY MIND WORKS
There we were sitting in the Broward Arts Center watching the Russian
National Orchestra perform flawlessly. Almost 100 instruments and one
white-haired frenetic man in front waving a stick at them. I immediately
thought of the early Communist experiments after the Russian Revolution
where someone thought of the "democratic" orchestra. It was pointed out
that the man in front, the conductor, was actually an imperialist who owned
the orchestra. He waved and it/they played on his command. So, the
conclusion was that the orchestra should be democratic, that is - each of
the members of the orchestra should be the equal of every other and there
should be no authoritarian dictatorial leader waving his stick. In this
version, each instrumentalist would interpret the music as he or she wished.
As you might guess, the result was anarchy - usually a deliberately planned
and executed precursor to revolution.
Now, while thinking this my mind looked over the orchestra and found that
there were: 8 bases, 10 cellos, one gong, a harp, one English horn, a whole
raft of other strings mostly of the violin family and some horns. They were
great. They played brilliant Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff
pieces. A baritone sang murky Mussorgsky "Songs and Dances of Death". This
is, perhaps, the finest orchestra we have heard.
So, I was left a lot of time to think. I fiddled with my hearing aids and
got the appropriate program to mute the terribly loud music and looked
around and thought. So, this is the way my mind works. I thought I saw a
violinist look at a cellist with love unrequited. The gong, used only once,
must have been out of tune (sic). The baritone looked like John Larroquet of
Night Court fame. And the conductor seemed twisted with mild scoliosis.
This, coupled with the sparse attendance on the left side of the mezzanine
led me to remark after the first piece that the right liked Russians while
the left disapproved. Then I made the mistake to speaking the thoughts my
restless mind thought up about the peculiarities of the Russian National
Orchestra. Bad Mistake. With thoughts such as these I must be out of my
mind.
Carol's Evaluation 10 out of 10.
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