I'm reading a book about Haydn by J. C. Hadden when I found this sentence:
"I am a poor creature, plagued perpetually by hard work, and with few hours for recreation." Haydn clearly recognized the necessities of ... artists. A quiet life is all very well, but no man ever yet greatly touched the hearts of men if he kept himself too strictly segregated from his kind....A composer to be great must live with his fellows, and open his souls to human affluences.
I got ah-ha moment when I read that.
I was so happy last night after I did the second fundraising concert for my four friends. And I had great times preparing them for this concert. We had a cellist this time, with a character. It was never boring. We were rehearsing till very late for a couple of days at my place, ate dinner together, spent time talking about random stuffs, retold jokes during concerts and about musicians, in short: we were bonding.
I don't think the need to be identified with other human beings, with people who are like us, is valid only for artists, or in my case, musicians. All of us do. That's why people even have bridge club. Sometimes I felt really estranged from the 'real' world of music which is out there, in Europe, where beautiful music isn't rare commodity, and it can hurt sometime. But the way of getting closer to it is in music itself, by making music. And when I do that with my musician friends, all my longings are cured.
After the concert my colleague talked to me for a while. She had asked about my plan to go back to Europe, and I told her that it's not going to happen this year. She said, "I know it's bad news for you, but for us, it's good news." I looked at her and smile, and told her this thing I should tell myself five years ago: "Here, or there, it doesn't matter, really. As long as you get to do things you love the most, you can be everywhere."
