Hi everyone,
In the last month, my world has opened up again. I began attending live music performances for the first time since early 2020.
The poem below was written five years ago during a New York Philharmonic performance of Mahler’s 7th Symphony, part of a A Concert for Unity. The message from that concert still resonates:
In this performance, the New York Philharmonic is joined by musicians from orchestras around the world to celebrate the power of music to build bridges and unite people across borders.
I was saving the poem until now because I knew I’d be hearing Mahler again with the New York Philharmonic — this time Mahler’s 1st Symphony, which is my favorite. I am glad I did. The emotional release I felt in Carnegie Hall last month was even more euphoric than what I experienced five years ago when I sat in David Geffen Hall and penned these words.
Wishing you moments of elation,
Rachel
— —
I cannot look
back even one
page, one flip,
one glance to see
the passage of time –
only a minute
it feels to my hand,
stroking a new
identical pen, guiding
the ink,
as effortlessly driven
across the page
as six months, no
six years, no
two decades ago,
driven by music
that is now
and also reminds me
of then
of a simpler time
that I now watch
repeated
by my own daughter.
I cannot look back,
cannot allow
the regret
of a long hibernation
to turn my pen salty
or my voice to ice.
I am still here.
That is what the music
of 130 musicians
screams at us.
And now, at the intersection
of movements,
I will allow my hands
to rapturously scream back.
— —
Recording of the New York Philharmonic performing the 4th movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major:
— —
New York Philharmonic Principal Bass Timothy Cobb plays & discusses the bass solo from the 3rd movement (I was about eight rows from where he was playing this at the Carnegie Hall concert - magic!):