Article 81997 (4649 more) in rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5:
From: jacque@niwot.scd.ucar.edu (Jacque Marshall)
Subject: JMS: What can a cellist do?
Date: 23 Apr 1995 10:12:16 GMT
Organization: Scientific Computing Divison/NCAR Boulder, CO
JMS,
I ran across this as I finished Robert Fulghum's latest book,
MAYBE (MAYBE NOT). He says to pass it on. It resonates so strongly
with things you've said that this seemed the obvious place to pass
it on TO. What use might be made of it in the context of this
particular forum, I will leave to your fertile imagination, as I
suspect it's obvious:
--jm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is the year 2050. In a large Eastern European city -- one that
has survived the vicissitudes of more than a thousand years of
human activity -- in an open square in the city center -- there is
a rather odd civic monument. A bronze statue.
Not a soldier or politician.
Not a general on a horse or a king on a throne.
Instead, the figure of a somewhat common man, sitting in a
chair.
Playing his cello.
Around the pedestal on which the statue sits, there are
bouquets of flowers.
If you count, you will always find twenty-two flowers in each
bunch.
The cellist is a national hero.
* * *
If you ask to hear the story of this statue, you will be told of a
time of civil war in this city. Demagogues lit bonfires of hatred
between citizens who belonged to different religions and ethnic
groups. Everyone became an enemy of someone else. None was exempt
or safe. Men, women, children, babies, grandparents -- old and
young -- strong and weak -- partisan and innocent -- all, all were
victims in the end. Many were maimed. Many were killed. Those who
did not die lived like animals in the ruins of the city.
Except one man. A musician. A cellist. He came to a certain
street corner every day. Dressed in formal black evening clothes,
sitting in a fire-charred chair, he played his cello. Knowing he
might be shot or beaten, still he played. Day after day he came.
To play the most beautiful music he knew.
Day after day after day. For twenty-two days.
His music was stronger than hate. His courage stronger than
fear.
And in time other musicians were captured by his spirit, and
they took their places in the street beside him. These acts of
courage were contagious. Anyone who could play an instrument or
sing found a place at a street intersection somewhere in the city
and made music.
In time the fighting stopped.
The music and the city and the people lived on.
* * *
A nice fable. A lovely story. Something adults might make up
to inspire children. A tale of the kind found in tourist
guidebooks explaining and embellishing the myths behind civic
statuary. A place to have your picture taken.
Is there any truth in such a parable other than the implied
acknowledgment of the sentimentality of mythmaking? The real world
does not work this way. We all know that. Cellists seldom become
civic heroes -- music doesn't affect wars.
Vedran Smailovic does not agree.
In THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, July 1992, his photograph
appeared.
Middle-aged, longish hair, great bushy mustache. He is
dressed in formal evening clothes. Sitting in a cafe chair in the
middle of a street. In front of a bakery where mortar fire struck
a breadline in late May, killing twenty-two people. He is playing
his cello. As a member of the Sarajevo Opera Orchestra, there is
little he can do about hate and war -- it has been going on in
Sarajevo for centuries. Even so, every day for twenty-two days he
has braved sniper and artillery fire to play Albinoni's profoundly
moving Adagio in G Minor.
I wonder if he chose this piece of music knowing it was
constructed from a manuscript fragment found in the ruins of
Dresden after the Second World War? The music survived the
firebombing. Perhaps that is why he played it there in the scarred
street in Sarajevo, where people died waiting in line for bread.
Something must triumph over horror.
Is this man crazy? Maybe. Is his gesture futile? Yes, in a
conventional sense, yes, of course. But what can a cellist do?
What madness to go out alone in the streets and address the world
with a wooden box and a hair-strung bow. What can a cellist do?
All he knows how to do. Speaking softly with his cello, one
note at a time, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, calling out the
rats that infest the human spirit.
Vedran Smailovic is a real person.
What he did is true.
Neither the breadline nor the mortar shell nor the music is
fiction.
For all the fairy tales, these acts DO take place in the
world in which we live.
Sometimes history knocks at the most ordinary door to see if
anyone is at home. Sometimes someone is.
Most everyone in Sarajevo knows now what a cellist can do -- for
the place where Vedran played has become an informal shrine, a
place of honor. Croats, Serbs, Muslims, Christians alike -- they
all know his name and face.
They place flowers where he played. Commemorating the hope
that must never die -- that someday, somehow, the best of humanity
shall overcome the worst, not through unexpected miracles but
through the expected acts of the many.
Sarajevo is not the only place where Vedran Smailovic is
known. An artist in Seattle, Washington, saw his picture and read
his story. Her name is Beliz Brother. Real person -- real name.
What could an artist do?
She organzied twenty-two cellists to play in twenty-two
public places in Seattle for twenty-two days, and on the final
day, all twenty-two played together in one place in front of a
store window displaying burned-out bread pans, twenty-two loaves
of bread, and twenty-two roses.
People came. Newspaper reporters and television cameras were
there. The story and the pictures were fed into the news networks
of the world. And passed back to Vedran Smailovic that he might
know his music had been heard and passed on. Others have begun to
play in many cities. In Washington, D.C., twenty-two cellists
played the day our new president was sworn into office. Who knows
who might hear? Who knows what might happen?
Millions of people saw Vedran's story in THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Millions have seen and heard the continuing story picked up by the
media.
Now you, too, know.
Tell it to someone. This is urgent news. Keep it alive in the
world.
As for the end of the story, who among us shall insist the
rest of the story cannot come true? Who shall say the monument in
the park in Sarajevo will never come to pass? The cynic who lives
in a dark hole in my most secret mind says one cellist cannot stop
a war, and the music can ultimately only a dirge played over the
unimaginable.
But somewhere in my soul I know otherwise.
Listen.
Never, ever, regret or apologize for believing that when one
man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth,
the world may stop what it is doing and hear.
There is to much evidence to the contrary. When we cease
believing this, the music will surely stop.
The myth of the impossible dream is more powerful than all
the facts of history. In my imagination, I lay flowers at the
statue memorializing Vedran Smailovic -- a monument that has not
yet been built, but MAY be.
Meanwhile, a cellist plays in the streets of Sarajevo.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Jacque Marshall jacque@ncar.ucar.edu
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