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| ancient sun |
It felt like we were sharing a room, closely. The sentiment
perdured even as we had to fiddle with equipment so that she may see my hands
and, thankfully, correct my physical approach of the instrument.
I believe the most fortunate of students are those who had the
chance to be taught by people they adored. Forget the 10000 hours of practice
as the road to fame and riches. I choose my words knowingly, for this has been
one of the most enviable chances I was granted. To be taught, especially when
young, by people I adored. Foreign languages, painting, Latin. At the
university, a few professors whose knowledge I admired, if from far. Now,
miraculously, my piano teacher. I say miraculously because one does not expect
to experience again such emotions as are the privilege of childhood and young
age.
Why is it important that one be in the throws of love in the presence
of one's teacher? I am sure the answer presents itself readily. There are
teachers who hand out, just like handouts, some form of knowledge, that which
we call today information. And there are those rare encounters where the
teacher entrusts her or his pupils with secrets more precious than knowledge.
The secret is, again, out in the open. And yet, not for everybody to grasp.
Knowledge without affect, without some measure of tenderness, admiration, love,
which teacher and pupil alike may share, has no value.
Curiously, what I remember most vividly about the first three
teachers I have named is their hands. I must have spent a lot of time watching
them. Seventy year old, sixty- and thirty-something old hands. The age
did not seem to matter. All such beautifully expressive hands; the first two, I
imagined then, because of spending so much time writing; the third, because of
drawing. The manner in which they held the pencil - they used mechanical, metal
pencils to write in those days - witnessed, in my mind, to the wealth of their
knowledge. As for drawing, nothing could equal the elegance of her holding le
charbon, while doing esquisses.
I of course also adored my mother's hands. For wholly different
reasons: do hair, caress, make
gifts, embrace. Her marvelous lips seemed to kiss even when smiling.
It is a common misconception that teaching has something to do
with transference. Students would transfer some of the feelings they hold for
they parents upon their teachers. I hope this is a misconception only, for my
experience would then indicate that students either love their parents very
little, or hate them a great deal. If this were true, then I would have had to
put up with a lot of misdirected affect. For my own salvation, I prefer to
think that the admiration, or rather adoration, as I like to call it, of the
teacher, has to do with love of a different kind. Love for what the teachers know
lovingly; or, we love them, because they tell us about the love they hold for
the object of their teaching. We come together in the hope that we, too, will
get to experience that feeling. Otherwise, what good would have been my love
affair with Latin, a language which I never used otherwise than to hold in
my heart?
My piano teacher has, of course, beautifully expressive hands.
Their beauty only revealed to those fortunate enough to take lessons with her,
and see her play. For such is the
secret of this kind of beauty. Not apparent to whomever, whenever, but
immediately obvious to she who would like to join in that kind of knowledge.
Again, the word is not appropriate. These hands know, indeed, marvelous things,
which came to them down the river of time. They repeat gestures which may have
been deployed by somebody hundreds of years ago. The words we use today, hardly
generous in describing the miracle of communication with those who came before
us: transmission we say, as if speaking about a radio cast. I like to think of that communication, rather, as something akin to our relationship to the sun.
Be that as it may, and even if we were to use the word
transmission, I am unendingly thankful to receive such gifts as those devised
by Bartok, with whom we consort through the graceful teachings of my
long distance medium and teacher; or by Schubert, and the wonder of these other, all
knowing, superb old hands:
