Sadly, our world seems so filled with conflict. This is not new of course; history is littered with a painful collection of international, religious, political, and, yes, interpersonal strife. Don’t all of us want to feel hopeful in the midst of this discord? Let’s listen to John Minahan’s heartfelt yearnings.
John Minahan teaches English and psychology at the Lincoln School in Providence.
Just getting dozens of people to play music together is a miracle unto itself. The larger miracle happening onstage at the VETS that day was that this particular orchestra was all teenagers. And they were brilliant. Yes, they were doing teenage-y things: tossing conspiratorial smiles around, swaying so expressively that their music stands threatened to topple over, stomping to the beat as if they were playing a hit single rather than a symphony. Which actually made the concert even better, because the players were note-perfect AND having a blast. But the biggest miracle? Half the kids up there were from Israel and the other half from Palestine. That was the whole point of this orchestra. Touring the world that long-ago winter, they had stopped in Providence to show why harmony is better than hatred. Also more fun.
The VETS sits empty of music now, shut down because of a global contagion. In the pauses that Covid has made necessary, in the face of its staggering losses, I’ve been hoping we might also pause to remember how fragile life is, how important it is to make peace while we can. And yet, I drove past the VETS recently and found myself in traffic with combat-ready National Guard vehicles patrolling the State House grounds across the way. Another contagion, this one made of mistrust and anger, had led to an attack on the national capitol, and our own capitol needed some militarized social distance. No attack happened on Smith Hill that day, and the soldiers have left, but mistrust and anger remain everywhere.
When those kids played the VETS, the highlight of the program was Brahms’s First Symphony. There’s a place early in the last movement where anxiety and despair take over and the music just shuts down. In the not-quite-silence, a horn announces a bold and simple theme, a sunbeam through the overcast. A hymn-like melody rises up, and a whole new world of possibilities opens. This symphony couldn’t have been a better choice for those young Palestinian and Israeli musicians. Their smiles and stomping feet showed that they understood what was happening. Sometimes a miracle is just that: the sudden appearance of a grace not necessarily earned. But I believe sometimes a miracle is a choice, a whole new world of possibilities that we create. Making music is hard. Making peace is harder. But as those kids showed, hard is not impossible.