To Do With What We Have

The recent passing of Luciano Pavarotti reminded me of another inspirational artist, Itzhak Perlman. The renowned violinist has had a lifelong struggle “to do with what we have”, and in the process has triumphed and provided the world with some of the greatest musical performances of the past half century. No performance in his life was as courageous and inspirational as one he gave in New York City in 1995. Below, Houston Chronicle writer Jack Riemer relived that performance of a lifetime:

“On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you
have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time , painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair.

Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the
Clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he
Makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant.

There was no mistaking what he had to do.

People who were there that night thought to themselves: “We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage – to either find another violin or else find another string for this one.”

But he didn’t. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then
signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he
played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work
With just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night

Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then
People rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us,
And then he said – not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone:
“You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can make with what you have left.”

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I
heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life – not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in
which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and
then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.”

~Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle, February 10, 2001

In this blog we talk a lot about architecture and design, but most especially about the inspiration behind it, and by implication the inspiration behind a life well lived. I believe that we all, rich or poor, can gather inspired design spaces to our lives and so lift up the experience of our homes, our businesses and our other special spaces. Do not be fooled into thinking that great design requires great financial resources. Great design more often is a product of revelation and being open to the inspiration of the simple but unique. Happily, in the design world, it is possible to make beautiful music anywhere, and celebrate our successes “to do with what we have.”