Mind-blowing

Mind-blowing

I must walk, every day. The rhythm of walking is good for mind and body and these days I share a common need for the rhythms of Beethoven's 9th. Symphony, with Schiller's Ode to Joy (Freude). One step at a time, we find resolution, hope, joy and freedom from the Virus. 

The 1989 Berlin performance celebrating the demolition of The Wall, conducted by Leonard Bernstein ten months before he died, is terribly moving. He replaced the word Freude! with Freiheit! (Freedom). To watch that youthful massed choir, with their hope of a different world, singing their hearts out for this manifestly aged Maestro, is both inspirational and nostalgic. Has anything changed much since then? Click on this Link to hear just 1.27 minutes of the finale. Wow, you really can walk to this great music!

As I walk past the Amsterdam Hilton I pause before one of the many huge bronze casts of Rodin's The Thinker. Now perhaps one of his most popular works, in 1880 Rodin intended it to be part of a huge commission: The Gates of Hell, inspired by Dante's Inferno. "Abandon every hope, who enter here". This strong figure has been brooding intently for more than a hundred years, but as I gaze up at him a beam of sunlight strikes his head. I suddenly want to shout: Hey man, what are you thinking about? Wake up! Now it's time to act! I try to get through to him, as the sunlight shifts and he seems to be sliding off a precipice into the depths. Or is it just me? Hmm, much food for thought....

My encounter with The Thinker, bronze, height 186cm., 

1980 -1917. With apologies to the grand master Auguste Rodin for my miserable sketch. His oeuvre really is 

mind-blowing.