The God of the Falls

Is God personal or impersonal? You choose ...

Niagara Falls came back to me recently when I read the accounts of Charles Dickens' and Anthony Trollope's visits to it in the past. I was there once myself, and carried away with me a vision that will last for a lifetime.

The most common images of the Falls, which everyone has seen, are those of the white plumes of spray cascading down the the face of it and exploding against the rocks below. But the most powerful impression that has stayed with me was the view from the top.

On the American side you can stand just a few feet from the edge of the river, protected only by a low stone wall, right at the point where it curves over the precipice. The sheer mass of the water, green and clear, makes it seem almost calm as it tips over the brink and disappears into the chaos below. The sight is compelling, almost hypnotic--you can get lost in it as if watching the flames in a fireplace.

Looking at this, it is impossible not to imagine floating in the water yourself and getting swept over the side. Yet the feeling that came over me as I stared was not one of fear but rather one of peacefulness and awe.

It strikes me that this vision is close to the one I normally have of God--an incredibly powerful rushing torrent of force in which we are carried along like so many twigs and leaves. It is a vision of an "impersonal" God, one whose business is only to flow, without concern for those myriad individuals carried along in the current. We are sustained by the waters of existence, borne up and moved, in a state of perfect magnanimity in which none of us matters any more or less than the least of creatures or the greatest of galaxies.

Yet the personal aspect of God exists as well, within each of us. Our own fates matter greatly to us, and to those who know and love us, as they should. It is left for us each to do our portion of the personal caring, and to make our own individual connections with that great river that supports us. We are the persons who make God "personal."

There are people who really have been caught up in such mighty rivers and carried over similar falls. Some of them have survived to tell the tale. And what some of them say is that in the moment when they knew all was lost, that the river was going over the side and they were going with it, that there was nothing they could do to prevent it -- in that moment they felt a kind of peace and oneness with their surroundings, almost a form of joy.

They had become the river.

Stoltzman & Son Rock in Miami

My ears are ringing, but that's a good thing ...

Way back around 1980 a friend invited me to a concert by Tashi, the ground-breaking contemporary music ensemble. It was, and still is, unorthodox to name such a group as if it were a rock band, so I certainly knew them by name. But at the time the only one of its members I could name was pianist Peter Serkin, and that was mostly because he was the son of the renowned Rudolph Serkin, also a pianist, giving him quite a hard act to follow.

Besides piano the group contained only a violin, a cello, and--oddest of all--a clarinet. This unusual instrumentation should have given them a highly restricted repertoire, but they found and arranged and commissioned plenty of material to play their way into legendary status.

On that long ago evening, the centerpiece was Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, that brooding work unique for being written while the composer was interred in a prison camp during World War II. This was in fact the single piece for which the group was originally formed, and the explanation for their choice of instruments. One of its movements is for solo clarinet, and if I had not noticed him before, the performance was more than enough to send me scanning the program for the name of Richard Stoltzman.

There are a couple of single, long, held notes in this piece that begin inaudibly soft and end as loud as the instrumentalist is capable of playing. In Stoltzman's case, the dynamic range was huge and impressive, and filled the entire space inside Dade County Auditorium until it rang. The notes were like primal screams (a trendy therapy in Tashi's era) of rage and release, framing an incongruously playful birdsong. I left the hall with those notes permanently implanted in my memory, along with the identity of the musician who had uttered them.

Stoltzman went on to forge quite a career for himself, both with Tashi and on his own, as featured soloist with countless orchestras throughout the world. But I next noticed him when I discovered his "crossover" album called Begin Sweet World, in which he followed the example of other classical performers who have moved into the arena of jazz. This album, featuring contemporary arrangements of some classical pieces as well as more improvisatory ones, was such a smash hit that he followed it up with several others--enough for another career--such as Brasil, New York Counterpoint, and Dreams.

Obviously by this time I was a fan. So it was with delight and anticipation that I went to see him perform again last week, this time at the University of Miami's Gusman Concert Hall under the auspices of Sunday Afternoons of Music (sundaymusicals.org). We noted that the elder Stoltzman was to be accompanied by his son, Peter, on piano. But little did we realize what a powerful performer the younger Stoltzman would prove to be--so much so that his father playfully thanked him for "still allowing me to play with him."

The first half of the performance was devoted to classical works. That solo movement from the Messiaen (I finally got to hear it again live) was framed by a Debussy Rhapsodie and a Leonard Bernstein sonata, which we learned was that composer's first serious composition, dating from when he was just twenty. Stoltzman introduced it by saying it owed much to Hindemith, but soon revealed the Bernstein that was to be -- "West Side Story coming soon." Indeed the lyrical features of it did presage what was coming later, and the Stoltzman duo went one better and gave us an additional treat that was not on the program in the form of a suite from West Side Story itself, just so we could compare them side by side, so to speak.

In both the Dubussy and Bernstein the pair played wonderfully well together, absolutely tight on timing and with voices so compatible it was sometimes hard to tell which was playing, even though the instruments are so different from each other.

The second half was all jazz, and it was here that the younger Stoltzman, who had already performed prodigious feats, really showed what he can do. We understood how his father must feel as he works to keep up--though he certainly rose to the occasion.

First came an Ellington medley, then a trio of Thelonious Monk. It was at the end of this set that the clarinet topped it off with a mad riff that ascended WAY up beyond the end of the keys, seeming to pop the musician's head off the top like a cork from a bottle. "Waa!" he exclaimed with a huge grin, and to huge applause.

"That note can't be written!" I said to my wife -- it was too high above the staff.

The concluding set from Porgy and Bess was tame by comparison, but it was nice to be let down easy and to be reminded of how solidly classical Gershwin has become. And the quiet encore of "Amazing Grace" caused peace itself to descend on the room.

The passing of musical genes through generations of a family is a well known phenomenon, as witness the likes of the Strausses, Mozarts, and most notable of all, the multiple sons of J.S. Bach. In our own day we have seen the aforementioned Rudolph Serkin being followed by his son, Peter, and violinist Issac Stern succeeded by his conductor-heir, Michael -- not to mention the Marsalis clan and the talented daughters of Ravi Shankar (which proves it's not a male gene).

Now with Richard and Peter John Stoltzman it appears that a new dynasty has been born.

Knowing When

Could the secret of our survival be something so simple?

Something amazing happened right before my eyes recently. It started normally enough, while I was driving home from work. There's a complicated intersection I have to go through to get onto US-1. Just before I got there my lane was blocked by a man in a large SUV who insisted on parking across it so he could push his way into the left-turn lane, which was totally packed. Frustrated, all I could do was stop and watch my opportunity to make the green light slip away.

I was not alone in my frustration. Another driver in the left-turn lane felt so strongly about the lack of consideration that he opened his door, got out, and began a shouting match with the SUV guy over the roof of his car. SUV guy in turn got out of his car so he could make his own points. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but it was pretty clear from their gestures that SUV guy insisted on his right to a left turn, no matter how inconvenient, while the other driver was not about to let him cut in line.

Perfect, I thought. Now it would take even longer for this guy to get out of the way. And besides that I would probably have to witness a violent crime, wait for the police and TV news crews to take down my report, and lose days of work while testifying in a criminal case. Getting home late would be the least of my worries.

That's when the incredible thing happened. Both drivers had got back into their cars, presumably still fuming. Then suddenly, with no warning or explanation, the SUV guy simply ... backed up. Yes, backed up and started waving people through the intersection, myself included.

What a wonderful and unexpected outcome! I felt as if the sun had just come out. Everything was light and breezy again as I smiled and waved my way along. Now, instead of feeling resentment at the anonymous driver, I felt gratitude and admiration. He had accomplished all this by just letting go of his position and doing the right thing for all concerned, including himself.

An interesting lesson. I found myself thinking about another time this happened, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Kennedy and Khrushchev were going head to head over Cuba with World War III a hair trigger away. But when it came down to it, they both found it was better to give up what they wanted, or at least some of it, and work a compromise. Two generations later, we still owe our survival to their joint act of standing down.

Would that more of us, including our current President, could find it in us to make that small sacrifice of self that produces the greater good. If we want to continue surviving, we will have to learn to do that time and time again.

Maybe we can start in small ways, by knowing when it's time to back up.