The city is so crazy. Everyone is running every which way, trying to get where there going, go where they were, get where they aren't. Both in physical space as well as mentally and emotionally this is true. Our busy sidewalks and subway platforms are only a small reflection of the speed at which we appreciate and welcome progress. Unfortunately so many of us seem to get caught up in the rhythm and forget that there was once a light at the end of the tunnel. Like a gerbil in a wheel that spins ferociously but never gets anywhere. And the only work done is the occasional squeak of the flimsy metal bits that rub together without bearings.
And after having been standing all day at work, and walking all around downtown on a mission to get concert tickets and dinner, my feet were really sore. We finally arrived at our destination: a concert hall in the basement of the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. We had to go down several flights of stairs into what seemed like the bowels of the building. It was dark and dingy, sparsely decorated with modern paintings and a tasteless mixture of florescent and incandescent lighting. The walls were a reddish-brown brick; hardly enthusiastic. But once we entered the concert hall, all that bad decorating, the busy streets and ruthless rushing that was so much a part of our lives seemed to fade out to merely a small flicker in the back of my mind. Concert halls don't usually have windows, so this one could have been just about anywhere. In a laid back and carefree town on a mountain top. In Vienna amongst the myriad of concert halls and historic sites, or in a bland American town just like all the others. We had entered another world, and even though the door was part of the university, the contents of the room belonged to another world. A world were joy and hope are foremost and creativity, practice and intelligence define the best of the breed. Where money means nothing except a sufficient subsistence. Welcome to the concert hall.
There before us sat a lovely Steinway piano on a brightly lit hardwood floored stage. There were a lot of people mingling and finding seats on the stage right side of the hall of course. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to see the pianist very well. A pair of microphones were set up on a stand right in front of the stage. Their cables snaked off to somewhere. Everything about this place was timeless. A concert hall from some time within the last twenty or thirty years. The music that we are about to hear was written long before that, so time really doesn't matter much. I have all night.
When the lights dimmed at a few minutes after eight there was a hush. People were quiet, and apart from the odd squeak of an old seat, there were no discrete sounds other than the soft lull of the air handling system. An unusually long time passed before the performer came onto the stage. Our clocks were all still running at big city speeds, and we needed to consciously adjust them to suit the new place that we had transported ourselves to. The pianist entered the room from the stage left side, circled the piano and gave a very precise bow and smile. He was excited to see so many people here, and you could tell that he was about to amaze us with his gracious command of the piano.
He sat down and prepared himself for the journey. Wiping his hands with a white towel he thought once more about what he was about to do. And with a big breath and twenty-five years of energy saved up, he let his emotions flood from his heart, to his mind, through the memory he saved of the music that Debussy wrote, and finally to his fingers and feet. The workings in the piano performed flawlessly converting his touch into glorious sound. Strings resonated, and interacted with the body of the piano, as well as with each other. The resulting tones emanated from the instrument to light up the room with sound. Within milliseconds the sounds started to reach our ears: human emotion filtered through a composition and delivered to the listener through a rather strange method, if you think about it.
Where did we ever get the idea to do this? To congregate in a place and watch a person sit at a very large wooden box filled with all kinds of tiny levers and actuators and have him press the keys in the order that some now dead guy came up with. It seems rather strange, but just like any good thing, it's best not to question it. For during that hour and a bit that he was playing, several hundred people bought themselves all some time. Their clocks slowed, even turned back a bit as they disconnected themselves from the world outside. Telephones were off, watches were not checked, news was not read, cars were not driven, problems were not worried about. Daily life was on hold as these people focused their complete attention to the music, the performer. This is an experience that cannot be replicated any other way, no matter how expensive your speakers are, no matter how perfect the recording, how comfortable the sofa. Because it's all about the experience, not the recreation of it.
In the midst of it all, we escaped, even just for a while. We are all better for it, this much I know. And if there is a God, he made music, because there are very few things that are so simple yet feel so good.