Magnificent Desolation

We watched the film GOODBYE LENIN! where a former East German astronaut is reduced, post-career, to driving a taxi. Can't happen here? Astronaut Buzz Aldrin found himself selling Cadillacs, used and new. He tells the whole story, beginning to present, including his moon walk, in MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION, his on-again, off-again story of disappointment and depression aggravated with chronic alcoholism. What ultimately cements his triumph? Swearing off drink, and the love of a good woman, who herself, undergoes a stunning reversal of fortune, from millions in family bank stock (her father founded Western Savings & Loan in 1929) to zeroes in the same bank stock, when its charter is revoked in the 1989 savings and loan debacle. An apocryphal yet hopeful tale of the fragility of life here on planet Earth as (once seen) from the moon. Many caveats for the close reader. And finally, an extraordinary comeback.

Author "chooses" not to buckle

We look for and file away stories of Extraordinary Comebacks, and this one is remarkable on any number of levels. The author suffers a Mahlerian trio of hammer blows of fate, by losing his son, wife and daughter within a 20 month period. He says at the outset: "I deliberately chose not to be destroyed." Cain tells the story of each tragedy, and then turns his attention to exactly "how" he repaired his outlook, the actual nuts and bolts of maintaining his sanity by living in the now, as he puts it. The re-telling carries the story of his own remarkable comeback, and has the capability to restore thousands. Hard to put down, we read it quickly over several days. What more pertinent gift for someone in your circle who is suffering? Buddha said "life is suffering" -- so this book is appropriate for everyone in or (momentarily) out of that status.

A triumphant comeback

Angela Hewitt brought the depth of her humanity, and dare we say it, a touch of divinity in her accounting of Bach’s Goldberg Variations Sunday May 25, 2009 at Symphony Center, Chicago.

She very generously preceded her 3 p.m. concert with a 2 p.m., half-hour lecture in the Grainger Ballroom. She noted that management was rather surprised at her request to speak, but that she wanted to make a connection with her audience before walking onstage and plowing into the monumental work.

The last time she was in Chicago downtown proper, she said, was in 1986 at the Dame Myra Hess concerts, a free series that was and is still broadcast on classical WFMT radio. She has well used that 23-year interval by becoming what many consider a foremost, if not the foremost, Bach interpreter on the scene today. I guessed that she must have been about 20 when she was here before, (43 or so now?) but it turns out that the youthful appearing artist is 51, so her age on her earlier visit would have been closer to 28.

Ms. Hewitt touched on historical notes to begin, the fabled gold goblet filled with coins with which Bach was apparently paid for the work (possibly a myth, no such item found among his effects at his passing), the fact that the work was so difficult it had not been played in public for more than 100 years after its writing (according to Grove’s dictionary, 1889), comments by interpreters Landowska, Tureck and Gould. She commented on Bach’s representation of pain, suffering, even the crucifixion using descending scales, minor keys and the like, but said that “ultimate despair was not in Bach’s mindset, his faith in an afterlife was ever present.”

Then she sat down to the piano, and worked through highlights of the work. Variation 3 “an outburst of irrepressible joy” (per Landowska), variation 13 “takes us up there,” variation 25, “the black pearl,” the longest and hardest variation where the keyboardist is called upon to “empty oneself,” variation 28 foretelling “late Beethoven,” and then the quodlibet folk tune speaking of something like if mother had prepared more meat I would have stayed, but “beets and spinach drove me away.” Bach the lofty, high-minded, otherworldly prophet, ending it all, with a commonplace equivalent of ‘where’s the beef?’ What could be more….Zen?

Turning the page of her extremely well-worn urtext edition, a fragment came off in her hand, causing a bit of laughter in the audience when she held it aloft. Ms. Hewitt said she would have to tape it back together.

All in all, the artist brought a sense of scholarship, artistry, humanity, humor and energy to her lecture, but the main course lay just ahead, where she would add her courage and stamina, which are prodigious (in October 2008 she completed her Bach World Tour where she played the 48 preludes and fugures of the Well-Tempered Clavier -- by heart -- more than 50 times!, so she knows all about courage and stamina).

Thirty minutes later, downstairs in the main hall, taking most all repeats, Ms. Hewitt traversed what many consider the greatest keyboard work of all time in one hour, twenty minutes, twenty minutes longer than most who do not take the repeats. Nary a note was out of place, the voicings were always clear, singing, unmistakable. She said in her pre-concert remarks that the trick was to make this “sound easy.” Indeed, she did. The N.Y. Times has called her playing "crystalline", she achieves this with minimal use of pedal. That, and her depth of passion, make her playing unforgettable.

She held the silence following the ending note for a full 30 seconds, and then was engulfed with a tsunami of roaring applause, cheers and standing patrons. Many curtain calls followed; surely it was too much to ask for an encore after such a traversal. In fact, it would be wrong to tack something onto the end of something this grand, this magnificent, this “complete,” as Ms. Hewitt had earlier called the final restatement of the Goldberg theme, no?

As it turns out, no.

Ms. Hewitt obliged the still-hungry crowd with perhaps the only encore that would have felt “right” at this exalted point, i.e. Bach’s own Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.

It was the perfect spiritual counterweight – this time in sound -- to her earlier comments on Bach’s faith.

And so it was on this late spring afternoon in Chicago, that this daughter of an Ottawa cathedral organist, named for God's helpers it was pointed out to me, who had graced her many fans and patrons with the depth of her humanity in lecturing and her impeccable playing, left them with a touch of divinity.

Read her blogs – and her own account of her Chicago concert -- at angelahewitt.com.

Postscript: I have just finished listening to her GV recording; this would be my proverbial desert island disc, had I to choose but one, without question..........

THE WRESTLER

Just watched THE WRESTLER. An unimaginably harrowing, brutal, sordid, nauseating, transfixing, existential piece of film art (non-squeamish only, please). More on the star from Wikipedia:

Rourke's acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and seemingly eccentric career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do".^[11] He is alleged to have turned down a number of high-profile acting roles, including Eliot Ness in The Untouchables, Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop, Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, Tom Cruise's role in Rain Man, Nick Nolte's part in 48 Hrs., Christopher Lambert's part in Highlander and a part in Platoon.^{[citation needed]} In a documentary on the special edition DVD of Tombstone, actor Michael Biehn, who plays the part of Johnny Ringo, mentions that his role was first offered to Rourke.^[12]

Boxing career

In 1991, Rourke decided that he "…had to go back to boxing" because he felt that he "… was self-destructing … (and) had no respect for myself being an actor."^[13] Rourke was undefeated in eight fights, with six wins (four by knockout) and two draws. He fought as far afield as Spain, Japan and Germany.^[14]

During his boxing career, Rourke suffered a number of injuries, including a broken nose, toe, ribs, a split tongue, and a compressed cheekbone.^[15] He also suffered from short term memory loss^[16].

His trainer during his boxing career was Hells Angels member Chuck Zito,^[17] and his entrance song was Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child o' Mine."^[18]

Boxing promoters said that Rourke was too old to succeed against top-level fighters. Indeed, Rourke himself admits that entering the ring was a sort of personal test: "(I) just wanted to give it a shot, test myself that way physically, while I still had time."^[19] In 1995, Rourke retired from boxing and returned to acting.

Rourke's boxing career resulted in a notable physical change in the 1990s, as his face needed reconstructive surgery in order to mend his injuries. His face was later called "almost unrecognizable".^[20] In 2009, the actor told The Daily Mail that he had gone to "the wrong guy" for his surgery and that his plastic surgeon had left his features "a mess."^[20]

She came back by helping others

We don't always "win," but we can almost always "come back" -- the story of brave Kindra McLennan, surely a must read.

Making your comeback in 2009

Wrote this for a friend's blog, and thought of posting here, too:

TOP 10 “To Do’s” for making your 2009 comeback

If you owned an asset in 2008, chances are it is worth less today.

You may have lost a job, or a home.

If you have a job, you may be thinking, “how secure?”

No one is immune. From Warren Buffett and his fellow billionaires, on down. Only the number of zeros and the degree of suffering varies from person to person.

We are all “one-down,” as the saying goes.

A few years ago I wrote a book: Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success. It was as much for me as for anyone else. I needed a lift, and visiting Border’s (their stock is less than $1, and they’re almost bankrupt now, too, that’s what I mean when I say we are all “one-down”) thought I’d have 20 such volumes to choose from. None (at that time) existed. So I took my tearsheets, and newspaper clippings gathered over the years, and created the manuscript and found a publisher. (I am now completing volume 2.)

500 comeback stories later, what did I learn? How does one “make a comeback?” Here is my summary and I hope it contains at least one idea that is a positive spark, a positive catalyst for you:


1. PERSIST. Don’t quit. “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” Sir Winston Churchill. As the Bible says, consider the ant.

2. MAKE THE EFFORT. Word hard. Great comebackers use all the hours in the day: chef Paula Deen barbequed all night when she was starting out with her sandwich business, mogul to-be Wayne Huizenga collected trash at night, sold new accounts in the day. Heavyweight George Foreman out-trained younger fighters to retake his crown. You can find your comeback right in the effort you make. The writer of Ecclesiastes said: “whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.”

3. UNDERSTAND TRANSIENCE. Don’t extrapolate temporary setbacks into permanent defeat. It’s not always going to be like this. “This, too, shall pass.” Lance Armstrong was given a 2% chance to survive cancer, he went on to win seven, consecutive Tour de Frances. Churchill again: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.”

4. CHANGE DIRECTION. Sylvester Stallone was stymied as an actor, so he wrote Rocky after seeing the Wepner-Ali fight. Billy Beane was a so-so baseball player, he quit and became a top GM for the Oakland A’s. Quincy Jones was a talented trumpeter, but after a stroke, he had to quit, and then became a legendary music producer. Someday we’ll all change direction: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” 1 Cor 15:19. There’s a big change coming….meanwhile:

5. EMPLOY SUPPORT. Stay away from the nay-sayers, even if they’re famous or going to be (Martin Scorsese told Billy Crystal he had “no talent.”) Pack your corner with friends who won’t let you quit. Ali did that: he wanted to quit during his first heavyweight championship, his manager wouldn’t let him. “Wherever two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them…” “Forsake not the assembling together of yourselves…”

6. REPEAT. It took Sir Edmund Hillary two attempts to climb Everest, Peary eight times to reach the North Pole, and various authors scores and sometimes hundreds of tries to get their works published. Go back again, and again, and ………Remember the woman who woke the judge at midnight, and was rewarded for her “importunity?” She was persistent, and in the end, got what she needed.

7. DREAM BIG. Your effort and ideas are worth many times what you may imagine. Fred Smith wrote a college paper that got a “C,” as the story goes, then turned it into $40 billion FedEx. Dean Karnazes ran a 226 mile ultramarathon and 350 mile run, plus 50 marathons in 50 days (2006). J.K. Rowling wrote her ideas about a fictional boy during a train ride. Harry Potter sold 100 million copies, and $4 billion movie box office, and counting. Pavarotti and his fellow two tenors got nothing for the first Three Tenors concert, it was for charity. They re-packaged it for pay the next time around, and a string of concerts and CDs followed. When he passed on, Pavarotti’s estate was valued at $475 million. You can do much more than you imagine. Dream big. The biggest dreams come from God himself: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD. They are plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Jer. 29:11

8. STAY HUMBLE. Attitude -- is everything. When tennis legend Andre Agassi fell from No. 1 to No. 141 (1997), he started over, went back to the minor leagues, upped his training, including weightlifting. It set the stage for greater things than ever before. Attitude – not image – is everything. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you.” Matt. 6:33

9. SELF-PROGRAM. Get a mantra. A psychiatrist-hypnotist provided Rachmaninoff the composer, who had a writing block, with a positive self-talk mantra: “You will begin your concerto. You will work with great facility. The concerto will be excellent.” It worked. He wrote his Piano Concerto No. 2. Many of us Christians employ a special verse that never fails to give a meaningful lift, or helps us refocus on what is truly important: “Son of man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears, and set thine heart upon all that I shall shew thee; for to the intent that I might shew them unto thee art thou brought hither. Ezek. 40:4” Speaking of which:

10. LOOK UP. Greatest comeback of all time, that of Jesus Christ to his kingdom on earth is still ahead, some say just ahead. That is the last comeback in Extraordinary Comebacks. “I will come again.” “In my house are many mansions.” Hey, Christian. Great news. No matter what the score at halftime, we win in the end. Never forget it, or your worth to God in that kingdom, even for a minute.


Learn more about Extraordinary Comebacks: 201 Inspiring Stories of Courage, Triumph, and Success by John A. Sarkett at http://sarkett.com or Amazon. He has two blogs: http://thecomebackblog.blogspot.com/ and http://sarkett.blogspot.com.

Also the author of After Armageddon and A short BOOK OF BIBLE PROPHECY: 77 predictions on USA, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Europe, The Euro, Mideast War, Global Warming, and more, see http://sarkett.com/aa for more.

Gilbert Kaplan summits his Mahler experience

ONE April Saturday in 1965, an economist at the American Stock Exchange was taken by a friend to an orchestral rehearsal at Carnegie Hall. He watched impassively as Leopold Stokowski, the aged Hollywood maestro who conducted “Fantasia”, stop-started Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.2 in C minor all afternoon. The economist thought little of it until later that night, when, sleeplessly, he tossed and turned, haunted by the music he had heard. Next morning he bought a ticket and at the concert “just found myself sobbing, absolutely hysterical”.

Please read on