“One always dies too soon—or too late,” I told him. “And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are—your life, and nothing else.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I’m just the UPS guy.”
Once again, the New Yorker exceeds all expectations with its piece on Christian Tetzlaff — and keep in mind I’m very far from being a classical music buff:
[Performing music] is the job that has the most to do with the belief in the existence of a soul. I deal in Berg’s soul, in Brahms’s soul — that’s my job. […] Trying to turn lead into gold is nothing compared to taking something mechanical like an instrument — a string and a bow — and using it to evoke a human soul, preserved through the century. – Christian Tetzlaff
This I think embodies the whole reason for the uncommon attraction some New Yorker pieces exert. I know of no other periodical that so consistently exposes its readers to some of the best writing on fields that are definitely not germane to their daily hopes and preoccupations, while convincingly making the case that these alternate world-views are all part of the same reality anyway.
Link: Christian Tetzlaff Rethinks How a Violin Should Sound : The New Yorker.
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