By Magic
This past Saturday night,
You and I attended a concert, as impassioned as us lovers,
Devoted to two of Russia's Romantic composers —
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky and Alexander Scriabin —
Performed by the consummate St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
And we were entranced, enchanted, our souls harmonized
By the sensuous passages woven into magic's fabric
Cloaking nothing less majestic than transcendence —
Bridges of shimmering, stimulating sounds
Connecting the reaches of human nobility with immortality.
It wasn't until intermission that we read the program —
A description of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto no. 2 in G Major,
The history of its conception, gestation, birth,
How its creator heard his way clear to intuitive fruition,
Knew the vital sequence of each lyrical turn of phrase.
But what most impressed us was the turmoil he experienced
While on vacation, at the rural estate of his beloved sister, Sasha,
In the Ukraine, during the autumn of 1879,
When lethargy soon set in, leaving him with a sense of emptiness,
A fit of ennui leading from mental inactivity to insidious malaise,
Producing profound unhappiness, a lack of satisfaction,
Which he described to his brother Modest, in late October,
Concluding, "I am absolutely incapable of living long without work.
Today I began to write something,
And the boredom vanished as if by magic."
That "something" was the first movement of his second concerto.
His realization struck a perfect chord, in both of us,
Most especially because you, my dancer, and I, your poet,
Identify so completely with the need to keep our psyches occupied,
Creating, breath to breath, heartworks that engender artworks.
05/03/11
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