Seymour Bernstein: a discovery

A couple of months ago, in trying to glean some advice from the internet about how to play certain piano pieces, I came across a book called With Your Own Two Hands: Self-Discovery Through Music, written by a pianist named Seymour Bernstein, who is a well-known piano teacher living in New York.  Although the title sounded a little corny, I bought the book anyway, through Amazon Marketplace--a used hardback from a private library collection for about $30.  I devoured the book in a few days, while marking, it seemed, almost every page with little purple stickers, meaning to come back to try to digest some of the passages later.  

A couple of months passed, and out of the blue I read somewhere about a recent documentary made by Ethan Hawke, called "Seymour: An Introduction".  I finally put the two together and discovered that along with many other people I had just been introduced to a great pianist and a great piano teacher.  I missed the film when it was screened at IU Cinema, and have not been able to stream it on-line (iTunes won't have it available until January 2016).  But after watching the many video clips on YouTube of his piano playing and the Q & A sessions given by him and Ethan Hawke about the film, I feel like saying that we've just been introduced to a living legend and a national treasure.  (He was born in 1927.)  On one of the videos Seymour recalled having met an old Viennese lady when he was in his 20s, at a retirement home in New Jersey where he once played some pieces by Brahms, and the lady telling him that he played better than Brahms himself.  She said she heard Brahms play when he came over to Hanover to play at Clara Schumann's funeral!  Now who, if not a living legend, could boast of a connection, though tenuous, like that in this day and age! 

One of the things that struck me about his book and his many recorded conversations is how rare and precious a good mentor and pupil relationship is.  Encountering a truly inspiring mentor in one's life, in whatever pursuit one is engaged in, is a gift of the gods.  The true mentor opens your eyes to something, gives you a momentary glimpse into a world rich and with unfathomable depth, and shows you clues about how to get there. Seymour Bernstein in this sense becomes a mentor to all those in whom his books and recordings strike a receptive cord.  My discovery of Bernstein through a random internet search was pure serendipity, like Ethan Hawke's meeting Bernstein at dinner at a friend's house, which led to his documentary, an unexpected find of a treasure trove.  

With the release of this film, his 1981 book is now selling for about $100 used and $350 to $680, like-new.  That was something I didn't expect when I purchased the book!

Here are some links to reviews about this documentary.  If it shows in your neighborhood, don't miss it.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-an-older-man

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/20/394270834/seymour-a-loving-portrait-of-an-acclaimed-classical-pianist

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/movies/review-seymour-an-introduction-is-a-lesson-in-perseverance.html?_r=1

Searle on Profile

Listen to an interview of John Searle on Profile at WFIU when he visited IU in September 2014 -

http://indianapublicmedia.org/profiles/cognitive-philosopher-john-searle/

7 Wochen Ohne / 7 Weeks Without

7 Wochen Ohne

Several important calendar dates seem to have all come together this week; they are important for different people and for different reasons.  For the Chinese, tomorrow is the beginning of the Lunar New Year, this time, the Year of the Sheep.  For Catholics, today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a period of soul searching, fasting, and praying, which lasts till Easter Sunday.  You wonder how, and what, I know about Lent and its religious meaning; the truth is I know very little but what I found on the web.  However, I've recently picked up quite a bit of information about how German people celebrate this religious "season" -- I call it a season for it literally lasts more than three months -- for 2015, it is 19 weeks and 5 days to be exact, beginning officially from 11.11.14 at 11:11.  I have no idea how that specific date and time came about, but this is how the germanic traditions go. 

Another bit of interesting information I picked up is how the German Evangelical Christian communities have transformed this quintessential Roman Catholic tradition of fasting and penance into a popular movement for concrete actions which aim at changing one's habits, presumably those which one wishes to be rid of.  And instead of the usual 40-day fasting, they've turned this into a 7-week event of "doing without" -- a kind of self-imposed privation which can help kick start the forming of a more commendable habit.  

Every year they come up with a motto, a call to action which the German Protestants can all participate in.  For 2015, their motto is "Du bist Schön!  Sieben Wochen ohne Runtermachen", which I translate as "You are Beautiful - Seven Weeks Without Telling Somebody Off or Running Down on Somebody".  I take this to mean without bashing somebody or making disparaging remarks about someone, here, concerning someone's looks, though I presume it can extend to other aspects of a person, and that the idea of bashing can include deprecatory remarks aimed at oneself.  Maybe a more colloquial translation of "Runtermachen" would be "trash-talking," or talking somebody down.  Whether "bashing" has reached a dangerous level in German society, which calls for a collective action to readdress, is something I can only speculate about.  Taking a curious look at their mottos from previous years, I think, would be interesting for social psychologists.  For example, for 2012 the motto is, "Good enough! Seven weeks without false ambition", and for 2013, "Riskier, man!  Seven weeks without caution."  What did they mean?!

This, however, reminds me of the practical advice which William James offers to help with forming a new habit of the will in his essay called Habit .  He said: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.  That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test." 

Kirk and I have taken a pledge ourselves to participate in this collective consciousness of self-denial.  Our motto is "6 Wochen ohne Fleisch, ohne Völlerei!"  I'm not going to translate it here, in case we don't make it.