Sunday, December 14, 2008:
Sweet Drew plays her Bach minuet on her cello in sacrament meeting. I love her! She said her palms were sweating, but I thought it just sounded really good. More performance expressionism? What’s inside comes out, and is visible, readable. She calmly considers the piece, and takes special and infectious care with interesting sequences and modulations. It’s like she takes each note and looks and looks at it closely, with an interest that is both deeply intellectual, and marked by full and simple feeling. And I saw an amazing thing.
Everyone craned and attended, and a few even gaped. Yes, it’s because our daughter is amazing, and/or because nice people were interested in the preparations of their young sister. But it’s also more general, and needful. An instrument being played is like proximity to a wild animal, or a new baby. Our lives are canned and staid and isolated, but not when things like this are happening. Liveness, nowness, presence—an organism operates, and a hush falls upon us. When Drew was done she went back to the front pew on the side there, and smiled at me.