There has been so much sadness around here lately. I just wanted to share something a friend sent me the other day:<P>On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came onstage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small acheivement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.<P>To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the locks on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.<P>By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the locks on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap-it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.<P>People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the locks again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage, to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."<P>But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.<P>When he finished, there was an awesomw silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.<P>He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us and then said, not boastfully but in a quiet, reverent tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left." What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with what we have, and when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.
