Facing The Rest Of Life
After Ruth died several things happened quite quickly. Her eldest son arrived from Norway to retire in Melbourne to be close to his mother and his passion, Puffing Billy. He boarded the plane in Heathrow at almost the precise moment of Ruth’s death. I had to inform him of her death when I met him the next day at the airport. Ten days later her daughter got married. The picture above is of me, the proud Father of the Bride (and the bride is also there). The following week I went to Sydney to be on the adjudication panel for the finals of the Australian Singing Competition. The week after that I flew to Tokyo for a concert and was there for a week.
When I got back home I stopped and backed away from all the noise going on in my head. I drove for two days in order to get to my favorite acupuncturist who always helps me so much physically which of course translates to emotionally as well.
I then visited some friends on the way back home taking over a week to get back. During this time in the car with my collection of CDs which I had carefully chosen for the trip, I had a good look at what I really thought, felt and wanted to do.
I admit that it came as an awful shock when I realized that years ago I was raving about how as a youngster I should be given a chance rather than all those old guys getting all the work and not caring about helping us who were so wonderfully talented and all we needed was the chance to show the world what they were missing.
I conducted my first production of the folk opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin when I as 25. At that age I knew I was the best and I was so anxious for all those old guys to move over and let me and my contemporaries loose so we could fix what they were so busily doing wrong.
At 25 I knew that I was better than anyone else at what I was doing and I felt I had earned the right to displace some of the old fogeys. Sure I was willing (!) to learn from them, but it got to a point quite quickly where by learn I meant use their influence to get me work.
Well I am now 75 year old, still conducting and doing it extremely well.
So what did I make of all this meandering in my head while it was being filled with music from my favorite CDs?
I will reveal all in the next 100 or so pages.
