A Flashing Insight Into Infinity

Although there are oceans we must cross
And mountains that we must climb
I know every gain must have a loss
So pray that our loss is nothing but time
--The Mills Brothers “Till Then”
Anyone who knows me knows it was only a matter of time before my weekly Wednesday posts started showing up on Thursdays.  Chronically late, I am the quintessential procrastinator, the reporter who never missed a deadline but always made the editor sweat, still writing, tweaking, making changes up until the last possible second.

Everything I read tells me I’m supposed to take it easy, not work too hard, don’t do anything I don’t want to do, but if I didn’t have a self-imposed deadline, I wouldn’t write at all. My original plan was to post on Wednesdays and Sundays, like my favorite New York Times columnist, but I accomplished that exactly zero times. It may not seem like much, but writing twice a week is a tough schedule, especially without the incentive of the Times paycheck.


As you might imagine, I adapted rather well to the no-worries, no-hurries Caribbean lifestyle, where even the newspaper might come out a day late if the beach weather was particularly fine. I thought time had taken on new meaning in the islands, but that was nothing compared to the melted-clock, Dali-esque world I inhabit now, where first the winter and then spring were measured not by snow and lilacs but doctors appointments and chemo treatments. Is it really almost summer?

Although I had to give up my yacht job for the season, I was fortunate enough to keep my part-time gig working on the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Internet 2 Global Concert Series, essentially a closed-circuit, high-definition, telecast transmitting live performances into university theaters around the world. I host the show and do the backstage interviews during intermission and between pieces.

I cannot say enough about how wonderful this experience has been. My orchestra co-workers—who have been with me from the head-spinning days of my January diagnosis through my dog-tired midpoint of chemo treatment just last week when I was napping between meetings and rehearsals—could not be more supportive. I am honored to work with this outstanding group of smart, dedicated and compassionate people.

And then there is the music.

It is not an overstatement to say that sitting in the concert hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and listening to this most venerable of orchestras play (Beethoven’s majestic Fifth, Bernstein’s beautiful West Side Story, Tchaikovsky’s first symphony, the one he called “a sin of my sweet youth,” Mozart’s last symphony, the exuberant Jupiter) is life-affirming.

I produced a piece for the concert featuring Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, known as the “Symphony of a Thousand,” about how the Philadelphia Orchestra came to give the first U.S. performances of this massive work nearly a century ago. A young Leopold Stokowski—the visionary conductor who would team up with Walt Disney years later to produce Fantasia in 1941—was in the audience for the world premiere in Munich in 1910. The composer himself conducted what Stokowski described as “a flashing insight into infinity.” There’s a great story about Stokowski, a few years later, fleeing Europe amidst wartime tensions, leaving most of his luggage behind, but with the score safely stowed in his briefcase.

Our final broadcast of the season was a performance of Schubert’s last two symphonies, “Unfinished” and “The Great.” The young composer, responsible for some of the most sublime music ever written, died at age 31.

Perhaps it sounds trite to call music a universal language, but I am often at a loss to find words for what I feel while listening. Before January, it could be simply joyful. Now I find it healing.

For a less esoteric but equally life affirming example of the power of music, I take you to a catering hall in the suburbs where, last Saturday night, my godparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. The highlight came early, when my godfather serenaded his wife with an old Mills Brothers song:

Till then, we’ll dream of what there will be
Till then, we’ll call on each memory
Till then, when I will hold you again
Please wait till then…
A sweet and simple declaration of love, without accompaniment, brought down the house.

In the search for something bigger, proof is often glimpsed in brief flashes. In the meantime, we focus on what’s in front of us, liking pushing back little blog posts another day and another day until there is nothing left to say about cancer. Till then.

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