Infinite in All Direction

I took this photo in May, a month before we moved out of the city. I love how it captures two seemingly irreconcilable realities. An ominous sky. And a fair-weather one with enough blue to patch a Dutchmen’s breeches. 

That I was able to see both at the same time was partly due to my privileged position on a 23rd-floor sofa in Lower Manhattan with an unobstructed view of America’s tallest skyscraper. But I also see this photo as an example of how art can encompass more than a single perspective.

 Here, the angled glass surfaces of World Trade Center One telescope a spectrum of space and time into one frame. Space: because that blue sky was then spreading over New Jersey, on the other side of the Hudson River, while we still cowered in gloom. Time: because fair weather was already making its way East. A mere half hour later all of Downtown lit up in a light show of pink, gold and blue. 

As we head into a tense election, I hold onto this image for hope.

Music can’t collapse multiple visions into a single instant. But over time, it can reveal the infinite potential of a given situation. The clearest example is through Variations.

The thought came to me in February during a Beginner’s Ear session at the Greene Space when the pianist Kyle P. Walker played Beethoven’s Variations on (what was in Beethoven’s time) “God Save the King.” In school, Kyle had been taught to sing “My Country Tis of Thee” to this same tune.

In Beethoven’s Variations, the melody chameleons onto a spectrum of moods: mathematically playful; jaunty; melancholic. Listening from within a meditative space, I was struck by how neatly the music modeled the concept of infinite potential.

Here was a theme that we have been conditioned to hear as a political statement. Yet as one variation followed another, what came through was the tune’s inherent innocence. (A Buddhist might say: emptiness.) The notes are just notes: it’s in the way we render them that they turn into stories of pathos and pomp — or tenderness and doubt.

I sometimes think it’s a shame that classical musicians have lost the habit of writing their own variations. Rock musicians still do this when they make a cover version of an existing song. The rock equivalent to Beethoven would be Jimi Hendrix with his iconic take on the Star-Spangled Banner . (That brilliant guitar solo in turn inspired this cover by cellist Matt Haimovitz.)

A cover offers a chance to put your stamp on something and shake loose the existing narrative. It’s a healthy way to question ownership. (When we listen to Clara Schumann’s virtuosic variations on a theme by her husband, Robert Schumann – whose music do we hear?)

When hear variations now I relate them to a quote by the Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh that was displayed in the West Village studio where I completed my mindfulness teacher training: “We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.”