冰男's Private Space

   John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform,
   and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central
   Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he
   didn't, the girl with the rose. His interest in her had begun thirteen
   months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he
   found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the
   notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a
   thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book, he
   discovered the previous owner's name, Miss Hollis Maynell. With time
   and effort he located her address. She now lived in New York City. He
   wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond.
   The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.
   During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other
   through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A
   romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she
   refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she
   looked like. When the day finally came for him to return from Europe,
   they scheduled their first meeting - 7:00 PM at the Grand Central
   Station in New York. "You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red
   rose I'll be wearing on my lapel." So at 7:00 he was in the station
   looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never
   seen. I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened: A young woman was
   coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back
   in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her
   lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she
   was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely
   forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a
   small provocative smile curved her lips. "Going my way, sailor?" she
   murmured. Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and
   then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the
   girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn
   hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into
   low-heeled shoes. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.
   I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow
   her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had
   truly companioned me and upheld my own. And there she stood. Her pale,
   plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and
   kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn
   blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her. This
   would not be love, but it would be something precious, something
   perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and
   must ever be grateful. I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out
   the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the
   bitterness of my disappointment. "I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and
   you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me. May I take
   you to dinner?" The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile. "I
   don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady
   in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on
   my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go
   and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across
   the street. She said it was some kind of test!" It's not difficult to
   understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom.
   The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the
   unattractive. "Tell me whom you love," Houssaye wrote, "And I will
   tell you who you are."

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For Tolstoy, love meant preferring others to oneself. That notion also sheds light on Bach, another of those who, in the deepest sense, entrusted their heart to love. He loved so fully, with all his being, in the most carnal, indeed incarnate way, that his self-effacement has caused us forever to perceive in that something resembling a revelation of life, something that explains his universality: it is as though Bach’s music were the awareness of music itself, its assurance and its promise. Perhaps no one –Shakespeare excepted – was comparably able to transform every atom in the universe, every particle of the world into such profound yet also intimate emotion. Bach is the composer who unites, in their truest sense, the plenary tenderness of prayer with the solitary echo of the divine. He grasps space and makes it an infinite curve; he takes time and makes it a possibility of the future; he seizes a dance and it becomes a betrothal to celebrate. For those of us who see so dimly, he restores a vision: the belief that with Bach there is no limit, that he enjoins us to rediscover that to the full, in this practice of love that has an obligation to the living to expand their lives, to restore love to the epicenter of their hearts.
There is no longer any dispute over the urgency of our situation today. But one would be mistaken in regarding Bach as no more than a man of his time bearing witness to ours – because Bach is always in the process of becoming. Even in his own lifetime, he eluded his contemporaries who saw in him a relic of the past, not a prophet for all times and all people. What could then be more natural than to find him at the source of Liszt, Busoni or Rachmaninov? Bach was such an island in the middle of the river, free and unwavering in the midst of the currents and counter-currents, fed from the shore of the source and carried to the shore of hope. Between these two markers is a symbolic path which is the signature of all existence. Bach was not at all torn: he knew how to build bridges. He is always showing us, in a flash of transparent clarity, how to reconcile the pain in our days with the burst of light. (Hélène Grimaud)