Eric's Notes

He’s playing the slow movement of the Mendelssohn violin concerto

The Andante..

His arthritic fingers vibrato on the strings, to produce

A sound, mellifluous like an aged Pinot Noir

His wrist moves the bow of experience

His wrist fluid yet strong

Worshiping the Muses

Of 60 years of muscle memory

With the mastery that only comes with decades of passion

To this art.

As the music emerges from instrument and player

I see musical notes flying up heavenward

And my mother

Who played this very piece in the Royal College circa 1941

In her velvet black evening gown

With her long neck bent over the instrument

Listening now

From above intently,

for the correct intonation, pauses, technique and mastery

for she would tolerate nothing less from her young brother.

His face now identical to Dada’s

The austerity genetically marked forever.

The self-discipline and self-demands now internalized

The refusal to indulge in musical emotionality,

No, the feeling must emerge only from the technique

The complete understanding of the composer’s intent alone,

Old school.

So ironic, despite the youthful years of trauma, isolation from friends,

Sports, socializing, (for Dada would insist he needed to practice, practice,)

He became the most sensitive human beings

Caring only for others

Always kind and considerate

I still quip to my kids

“when I grow up I want to be like Uncle Eric!”

The last sibling to survive

His sisters’ absence is palpable.

Now the “gentleman of Jerusalem” in his 90’s

Barely able to walk

His legs giving out

His balance off,

But once seated on his perch

Immediately regains mastery of his life through his instrument,

It is the violin shaped luchot that carry him,

Its letters, the musical notes (and tears) that now flow.

Much like the Hebrew letters flying off the Luchos

In response to our communal idolatrous orgy

Slipping into our familiar addictions,

When this so-called savior doesn’t show up to rescue us,

There now develops a tug of war with the Divine,

wishing to retrieve the tablets

And Moses holding on to them for dear life…

Until the letters flew off in protest

Too holy for this people,

The tablets now became too heavy to carry and fall

Smashing to the ground.

Here too I see the notes flying off

His aged, wooded viola’s tones

Wafting up in a spiral smokey plume

Like incense,

The music dissolves into the black dots and crotchets flying

Bearing with them the soul of the player (or is it just the listener?)

Demanding answers to the question why?

In his music he reaches places his intellectual mind does not (dare?) enter.

In the andante he explores the very tragedy of our family

The genetic traits that allowed Dada

to both push him to his limits

as well as write his heresies,

And this sweetness from all this suffering

opens my broken soul to feel what it feels.

The Hebrew letters and the Mendelssohn’s notes are one and the same

Reflecting his grandfather’s attempt

to salvage the lost letters of his faith for modernity

And the musical cries of “Hear ye Israel” [1]

Now wafting in his sweetness

Drowning in the sound

The tears mix with the notes

And carry them up to Mum

These tears are full of rage and little acceptance

But Mum would surely approve

Of her virtuosi brother (so virtuous) and his broken listener

Hymns to the drowning,

Unable to swim in the ocean of grief

Rage rage in the dying of the night…

[1] Oratorio Elijah