Why Artists Live Longer Than Anyone Else

I've been a musician as long as I've been a writer; I started piano lessons the same year I learned the proper way to hold a pencil. So it surprised no one when my college journey took me through a few semesters as a music major. I had some career paths in mind--high school teacher, music therapist, concert pianist--but in the end it didn't feel quite right so I moved on. But the college orchestra I joined for the required ensemble credit also functioned as the city orchestra where I lived, so I stuck with that to keep me playing the violin.

Few things are more fun than playing with a community orchestra. This past Friday evening we held our spring concert, and it was the first performance I remember having no discernible theme. We played an overture from an opera by Rossini; a military band suite by Holst; a dance number from an opera by Borodin; a collection of adapted Renaissance lute pieces; and excerpts from Johan de Meij's Lord of the Rings Symphony. There was something for everyone.

Sometimes rehearsing and performing a piece of music gives you insights that the audience won't get from the printed concert program. For example, Friday's program only listed Ottorino Respighi as the composer of the lute pieces. In reality, Respighi simply adapted those pieces for the orchestra; the original composers included Simone Molinaro and Vincenzo Galilei (whose most notable achievement was his son, Galileo). Respighi did good work, though; his Ancient Dances and Airs for Lute were fun to play and vividly evoked the Renaissance. Here's my favorite of the bunch, Passo Mezzo e Mascherada:

No one knows who originally wrote Passo Mezzo e Mascherada. But whoever composed it, everyone who came to our concert heard him on Friday. He's been gone so long that history has forgotten his name . . . but we still heard him. Those were his notes.

As a Mormon I believe that everyone who has ever lived will gain immortality through the Atonement and Resurrection of Christ. Death is no more permanent than your most dramatic high school relationship.

But I also believe in a more immediate form of immortality--the kind artists create themselves.

We hear Shakespeare's voice in every performance of Hamlet.

We see the world through Van Gogh's eyes with every encounter of his Starry Night.

We taste Ruth Wakefield's cooking every time we accidentally devour platefuls of chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the night.

God bless you, Ruth Wakefield.
Image source: Betty Crocker

I just finished reading Great Expectations, and I swear Charles Dickens was grinning the whole time. "Wait'll you see how I screw up Pip's life in the third act!" he probably giggled. (Oh, Dickens, if only I could be the cruel master of characters you were!)

This is one small part of why I write. Though my children will always be my greatest legacy, I certainly wouldn't mind appearing in a university course on 21st century American literature one or two hundred years from now. I don't want to spend my life merely reading, watching, consuming; I want to leave something behind that keeps me alive forever. My name may be erased, but my voice will never fade.

Sorry, world. You're stuck with me.