On Bernstein

Originally posted September 9, 2003:

i have been listening to the same track of Bernstein's on the town for over two hours. the pas de deux ballet sequence that immediately follows "lonely town." anybody know that song? it is one of the most haunting songs ever, and so is the instrumental section that follows it. i generally wind up listening to this track over and over again whenever i come to the music library. for years, in fact, i have been listening to this one track over and over again.

the particular part of this musical that i am listening to on loop makes me unfailingly teary. it is so heartrenderingly beautiful. i feel as if, if you close your eyes and just latch onto the music, you can almost grasp something so beautiful your mind can't comprehend it--so much beauty, in a song about loneliness and need and isolated yearning. so much beauty, and if only i had the ability, i would manage to wrap up all that beauty, that i am listening to right now, and encapsulate it somehow with just the perfect words, and share it with all of you. or at least make you all listen and listen over and over again to the music until you understood, as much as you can, all about that beauty and that sadness and that loneliness. until you could grasp how perfect it is, how desolate and perfect and glorious. how, even as you're lamenting something you lost, or someone you loved, how close you are to every other person who has wept sincerely and honestly for something they loved; how close you are to every other person who ever listened to this same music, and closed their eyes because it was almost too beautiful to bear; how close you are to the purest essence of the soul, whatever that is--that essence that brings us to tears when we think about and experience the sublime: about music, or love, or art.

I was reading this quote from Bernstein earlier, while listening to this music. "Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel."

The thing about Bernstein that I think is so perfect in terms of his artistry is that he *embodies* the qualities he