Calling All Humans!

Years ago, while a freshman in St. Louis Conservatory, I was required to buy and read an anthology of essays by Dr. Lewis Thomas, who was a research pathologist and medical administrator by profession, and served as President and then Chancellor of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in the late 1970s.

His anthology, “The Lives of a Cell”, was a brilliant collection of incisive and thought provoking essays, examining our daily lives and our relationships to each other, the world we live in from a different perspective on it all, as if he were an alien visitor newly arrived to Planet Earth and curious about us human beings and our busy efforts day to day.

One of his essays was about an exhibit at one of the major museums in New York City in the 1960s—it was a giant three story ant-farm – built in the center of the museum, with literally tons of sand, encased in clear plexiglass walls, surrounded on all sides by scaffolding and stairs so that visitors could climb up and around the entire display, watching the millions of ants from all sides.

Dr. Thomas visited the display himself, and like the many other visitors to the museum that weekend was captivated – observing the endless strings of ants as they worked together without rest – burrowing, tunneling, constructing – working together in word-less precision building themselves an immense and intricate ant empire in the sand.

Suddenly, the Good Doctor began observing the people themselves – and was amazed by the similarities he found between the watched and the watchers.  In almost word-less silence, the strings of human beings – filing through the museum, up the stairs and around the scaffolding seemed to him to be a mirror image of the strings of ants inside – people slowing circling around the ants, turning to each other with quiet murmurs, and nods, like the ants – touching antennae, rubbing shoulders, sharing their experience quietly with each other. 

I’ve often thought of that in terms of what we do as musicians – bringing together fellow human beings – musicians and audience on concert evenings – hundreds of people congregating together in a darkened hall – sitting quietly, shoulder to shoulder, with eyes closed, to experience the “noises” that others in the room are creating on manufactured objects that vibrate – creating noises that become sound that we have somehow all agreed are “beautiful sounds” – sounds that take us inward and outward in our individual thoughts – a contemplation of life, an “escape” for a moment from life’s travails, but ultimately an experience that is shared with all others in the room – sending us out into the night air rejuvenated, with a new sense of wonder and faith in the basic goodness of life and in each other – a cultural communion service.

IN the end, this is the ultimate human experience – to be shared together – not in the solitary, disconnected, disengaged confinement of our home internet cyberworld. 

At Claflin Hill, we have two more opportunities looming on the horizon for April – two chances to leave our armchairs and our laptops, to go out into the night air, and convene together, to rub shoulders, murmur greetings to neighbors and to close our eyes and share our culture.  Join us at the Alternatives Whitin Mill on Friday, April 12^th the final concert of our new chamber music series, featuring Brass Venture, and on Saturday, April 27, 2013 at the Milford Town Hall for the Season Finale of the Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra, “Springtime Phoenix” – two amazing concerts, two amazing visceral, aural experiences, not to be missed.   Calling all Humans!

Paul Surapine