Claire de Lune softly played on my Bose at 4 am this morning, sweeping me back in time to my teens when I was a budding clarinetist in Plattsburgh, New York.
That time in my life was filled with good music, shared inspiration of fellow musicians; directing the Philharmonic from my third floor bedroom, a new LP from Columbia Records blaring the Firebird Suite, in a nineteenth-century brick home overlooking Lake Champlain. I was thirteen years old, and how could I have known that what I experienced then would be some of the best experiences I would ever have?
Claude Debussey broke with tradition at the Paris Conservatory, writing music influenced by the period's Impressionist painting schools. Afternoon of a Fawn and La Mer are two other Debussy favorites of mine. Debussy takes listeners into a kind of rapture. This morning's happenstance, listening to Claire de Lune and drinking organic coffee from Chiapas...these are the experiences of only a small part of the human race.
How can it be that while I sit in my warm living room, enjoying great music and coffee, anticipating a day when I can determine my own future, go my own way with no worries about food, shelter or safety...that three-quarters of my fellow man are lying on the bare ground, starved and threatened by a mean race of people within their own borders?
How can these realities exist in time together?
When I was thirteen it was perhaps forgiveable because I rarely encountered information about people living in these conditions. But now we have CNN and that other reality is present in my living room with me. It comes as a discordant fact in the midst of Debussy's exquisite creation presenting me with a dilemma early in my day. What should be my response? How can I proceed now that I recognize I am related to those who suffer?
Is adulthood a time when the seriousness of the world community steals away the rapture of youth when life was taken for granted and fully tasted, embraced? No, I think not...but the art of living in the world's incongruity requires me to live with integrity, to try to do what I can do so that any human being on the Earth can enjoy an early morning interlude with Claude Debussy's masterworks.
For information on the latest situation in Darfur: http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/document.do?id=ENGUSA20061022002
Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment