#297 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Saturday March 12)
Good morning,
A QUOTATION FOR THE DAY
“Most people are on the world and not in it.” and “This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
--John Muir
MUSIC
Proof that music sometimes transcends the folly of mankind, thank you Mark Schwartz for sending this moving “Violins Across the World Play for Ukraine”. It’s only a little over a minute long. Please watch it. First, read the explanation below:
“I am a professional violinist. On the day Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, I was at home practicing my scales. I wondered what my Ukrainian counterparts were doing in that moment... Some were also practicing their scales... in between arming themselves with Molotov cocktails. Some violinists were hiding in basements and bomb shelters in Kiev, but still had their violins with them… I asked one of them, young virtuoso Illias Bondarenko, if he would film himself playing in his basement shelter. I then asked other violinists in Ukraine and colleagues from around the world to play along with him in harmony. In the space of 48 hours, I received videos from 94 violinists, representing 27 different countries.
9 other young violinists sheltering in Ukraine join in unison, and are accompanied in harmony by players from the London Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, Oslo Philharmonic, and top violinists from the USA, New Zealand, Belgium, Georgia, Poland, South Korea, Netherlands, South Africa, Moldova, Germany, India, and the entire violin section of the Munich Chamber Orchestra. The studio players from Hollywood, violinists from Adele’s band and Hans Zimmer’s tour. Violinists who have recorded on most of the major albums and film soundtracks. We have renowned Scottish fiddle players and Indian violinists and top fiddle players including Mark and Maggie O Connor, Brittany Haas, Sara Watkins (Nickel Creek) and Gabe Witcher (Punch Brothers)…
So we play an old Ukrainian folk song together across continents, called Verbovaya Doschechka… Violinists are a fellowship who all have rosin and broken E strings in common, but sadly some are currently having to think about how to arm themselves, and hiding in bomb shelters instead of playing Beethoven or bluegrass.
POETRY
There Shall Come Soft Rain
By Sara Teasdale
There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Have a great day,
Glenn