Requiescat in Pace

Marvin Rabin

I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great

Stephen Spender

I think continually of those who were truly great.

Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history

Through corridors of light where the hours are suns

Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition

Was that their lips, still touched with fire,

Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.

And who hoarded from the Spring branches

The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget

The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs

Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.

Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light

Nor its grave evening demand for love.

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother

With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields

See how these names are feted by the waving grass

And by the streamers of white cloud

And whispers of wind in the listening sky.

The names of those who in their lives fought for life

Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.

Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,

And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

(Note: The writer of this blog wishes to re-post the following, as a tribute to Marvin Rabin, who has just passed away. It was originally published in this blog on February 18, 2013.)

The Open World of Marv Rabin

Want to see a guy go from his mid-nineties to about age fifty in thirty seconds or less?

Marvin Rabin does it, unbelievably, just by talking about music, his lifelong passion and profession.

Interesting what you know and don’t know about adults when you’re a kid. Rabin was the founder of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra; he was imported—OK, lured—to the UW from Boston. So I figured he was from a musical family, a long line of cultured, genteel, well-heeled patrician people.

Wrong, his father was a store keeper, and didn’t play an instrument. But his father, a Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine, did realize—vaudeville kept a lot of musicians fed and shod. Remember, the talking picture hadn’t been invented, and that meant every movie house had a pit orchestra. So his father put a violin in young Marvin’s hands, which changed his life and a lot of other lives.

Mine, for example. When Rabin believed in you…

But wait…

Rabin believed in EVERY kid, which is to say that he was always looking for that special talent, or spark, or curiosity that made a kid unique. Nor was he just a music teacher, a conductor, an educator; he came to music relatively late, having gotten a Bachelor’s degree in history and political science. He wanted kids to grow up and develop and keep developing through their lives, and if that meant music—great.

“Don’t commit closure,” he told me once, and as you can see, he’s still banging that drum.

But it’s a message that’s worth spreading, and that I may have heeded. My brothers didn’t play an instrument, went into their careers of journalism and law, stayed there, and have done well.

They haven’t, however, been a musician, a nurse, a teacher or a writer. And if I’ve had four professions and moved to a foreign (in a domestic sense—it’s like being pregnant in a virginal sense…) country and learned another language, well, to what do I attribute it?

Hours of practice at the cello.

It does something to you neurologically—something that was discovered only in the last twenty years. Musicians’ brains are different, wired differently. Significantly, the same areas of the brain that are activated in speaking and comprehension are activated when playing an instrument. Giving a kid a cello is really giving him a second language.

And like language, it can be done both singly or in a group. So every Saturday for four years in High School my father would drive me in the green Buick Skylark to the Humanities Building. For many of those Saturdays, Marvin Rabin would be charging down the halls shortly before 9AM, shouting “Sharon!”

Sharon Leventhal, now a fine musician, then a fine musician and concertmistress of WYSO. Which meant she stood up, gestured to Emily Auerbach who tweeted an A, and tuned the orchestra—winds, brass, and finally strings.

He was mercurial and temperamental. Yes, he could throw a temper tantrum, explode, rage. But it was always followed by an impassioned appeal—he knew we were great, he knew we had it in us, he couldn’t stand our not giving our best.

“HOWIE!” Rabin would shout, and the orchestra would cringe. It was Howard Metzenberg and Shostakovich Fifth, which Rabin didn’t much like but everybody else did. And Howard played the contrabassoon, for which there is a gorgeous solo in the Shostakovich.

It was almost comical, almost a personal thing going on between them. The solo was never right, the phrasing wasn’t there, the notes cracked, Howie entered at the wrong time or got the rhythm wrong. The orchestra would tense just before the solo—how would Howie screw it up this time? It was unbelievable that there was any new, fresh disaster to be found in the solo, but Howie never failed in mutilating it in new and terrible ways.

Until, of course the day that Howie—perhaps having practiced that week?—played it perfectly. The orchestra stopped spontaneously and cheered, Rabin leapt off the podium and bounded to Howie, the two embraced.

People have commented on the anti-aging effect of music, how musicians go on and on. Certainly Rabin is just the same—his voice as much a viola as he is a violist, the hands always in movement. When he talks about playing an instrument, he lifts an unseen viola under his chin—he’s playing even as he speaks.

He was one of two great musicians who had a message for me—you’re good, this can be your life if you want it, don’t give up, believe in yourself.

“That was a miracle,” he told me, after learning that I had put together the recital with Gunnar in three months, after years of not playing.

It may have been, but if so, who had performed it? Myself, of course—you don’t do that without a lot of practicing. Gunnar, who was always not flowing but flooding with encouragement.

And WYSO and Marvin Rabin. It was the one beacon in my life during those black years, those years in which I thought I fooled everybody around me, all those people who were so discerning about everybody else and so mistaken about me.

Rabin never stopped believing. Years later, I used to play music with a fine pianist who lived up the street. And for the first time, I worked out the frustration and neuroticism that had plagued me for decades about music and the cello. I dropped it all and played.

The best playing of my life.

Was it Marvin Rabin, up there, still passionate, still encouraging, still finding the unique and wonderful in all the others and me?

Maybe.

Or had just I listened at last?

Interview – Marvin Rabin from Loyola University on Vimeo.

The Open World of Marv Rabin

Want to see a guy go from his mid-nineties to about age fifty in thirty seconds or less?

Marvin Rabin does it, unbelievably, just by talking about music, his lifelong passion and profession.

Interesting what you know and don’t know about adults when you’re a kid. Rabin was the founder of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra; he was imported—OK, lured—to the UW from Boston. So I figured he was from a musical family, a long line of cultured, genteel, well-heeled patrician people.

Wrong, his father was a store keeper, and didn’t play an instrument. But his father, a Jewish immigrant from the Ukraine, did realize—vaudeville kept a lot of musicians fed and shod. Remember, the talking picture hadn’t been invented, and that meant every movie house had a pit orchestra. So his father put a violin in young Marvin’s hands, which changed his life and a lot of other lives.

Mine, for example. When Rabin believed in you…

But wait…

Rabin believed in EVERY kid, which is to say that he was always looking for that special talent, or spark, or curiosity that made a kid unique. Nor was he just a music teacher, a conductor, an educator; he came to music relatively late, having gotten a Bachelor’s degree in history and political science. He wanted kids to grow up and develop and keep developing through their lives, and if that meant music—great.

“Don’t commit closure,” he told me once, and as you can see, he’s still banging that drum.

But it’s a message that’s worth spreading, and that I may have heeded. My brothers didn’t play an instrument, went into their careers of journalism and law, stayed there, and have done well.

They haven’t, however, been a musician, a nurse, a teacher or a writer. And if I’ve had four professions and moved to a foreign (in a domestic sense—it’s like being pregnant in a virginal sense…) country and learned another language, well, to what do I attribute it?

Hours of practice at the cello.

It does something to you neurologically—something that was discovered only in the last twenty years. Musicians’ brains are different, wired differently. Significantly, the same areas of the brain that are activated in speaking and comprehension are activated when playing an instrument. Giving a kid a cello is really giving him a second language.

And like language, it can be done both singly or in a group. So every Saturday for four years in High School my father would drive me in the green Buick Skylark to the Humanities Building. For many of those Saturdays, Marvin Rabin would be charging down the halls shortly before 9AM, shouting “Sharon!”

Sharon Leventhal, now a fine musician, then a fine musician and concertmistress of WYSO. Which meant she stood up, gestured to Emily Auerbach who tweeted an A, and tuned the orchestra—winds, brass, and finally strings.

He was mercurial and temperamental. Yes, he could throw a temper tantrum, explode, rage. But it was always followed by an impassioned appeal—he knew we were great, he knew we had it in us, he couldn’t stand our not giving our best.

“HOWIE!” Rabin would shout, and the orchestra would cringe. It was Howard Metzenberg and Shostakovich Fifth, which Rabin didn’t much like but everybody else did. And Howard played the contrabassoon, for which there is a gorgeous solo in the Shostakovich.

It was almost comical, almost a personal thing going on between them. The solo was never right, the phrasing wasn’t there, the notes cracked, Howie entered at the wrong time or got the rhythm wrong. The orchestra would tense just before the solo—how would Howie screw it up this time? It was unbelievable that there was any new, fresh disaster to be found in the solo, but Howie never failed in mutilating it in new and terrible ways.

Until, of course the day that Howie—perhaps having practiced that week?—played it perfectly. The orchestra stopped spontaneously and cheered, Rabin leapt off the podium and bounded to Howie, the two embraced.

People have commented on the anti-aging effect of music, how musicians go on and on. Certainly Rabin is just the same—his voice as much a viola as he is a violist, the hands always in movement. When he talks about playing an instrument, he lifts an unseen viola under his chin—he’s playing even as he speaks.

He was one of two great musicians who had a message for me—you’re good, this can be your life if you want it, don’t give up, believe in yourself.

“That was a miracle,” he told me, after learning that I had put together the recital with Gunnar in three months, after years of not playing.

It may have been, but if so, who had performed it? Myself, of course—you don’t do that without a lot of practicing. Gunnar, who was always not flowing but flooding with encouragement.

And WYSO and Marvin Rabin. It was the one beacon in my life during those black years, those years in which I thought I fooled everybody around me, all those people who were so discerning about everybody else and so mistaken about me.

Rabin never stopped believing. Years later, I used to play music with a fine pianist who lived up the street. And for the first time, I worked out the frustration and neuroticism that had plagued me for decades about music and the cello. I dropped it all and played.

The best playing of my life.

Was it Marvin Rabin, up there, still passionate, still encouraging, still finding the unique and wonderful in all the others and me?

Maybe.

Or had just I listened at last?

Interview – Marvin Rabin from Loyola University on Vimeo.

Odyssey

It was a day when the Puerto Rican Goddess chose her theme with typical exuberance.

“Our great grandfather came to Puerto Rico from the Canary Islands as a very young man without a penny. He collected wood in the fields, and then went and stood by the side of the road. Took anything anybody would give him for the wood. He saved and saved, never spending any money on anything, but buying land. He ended up a very rich man, and bought one of the first cars in a town west of here. Then he realized: he could travel for less on the públicos—the public cars. So he sold the car back to the dealer.”

A story a friend, Carlos, told me at the café. We were talking families, and how for the generation of the Great Depression it’s agony to shell out a dime they don’t need to spend.

Now, of course, they can afford all the help they need. But Carlos’s parents are still living frugally, still wanting to pass something on to their children, still worried that they’ll run through their money and be a burden.

“Your mother always wanted to go to Europe,” said Carlos’s father, when Carlos, having reviewed his father’s finances, told him just how well he had done.

They hadn’t, of course. They had stayed home and worked and gotten places their parents hadn’t—both Carlos’s parents went to the States and got Master’s Degrees, both worked, both believed passionately in getting ahead.

No time for Europe.

Oh, and no money, either.

There were similar stories in my family. Franny’s family were eccentrics, Jack came from salt-of-the-earth Norwegian immigrants. No money there, although there is a hospital ward that my grandmother had donated somewhere in Chicago. And she hadn’t had a car until she was shamed into it by hearing a rumor that the Newhouses were too poor to buy one. So she bought a Cadillac, drove it to church, drove it back, had the tires taken off, and kept it on cinder blocks in the front yard.

And like Carlos’s parents, Jack had been a big believer of getting ahead, making progress, going somewhere and making a life that was better than the person’s who had given you that life.

And then giving a hand to somebody less fortunate—but as hardworking—as you.

Which is why Jack had called up his old friend at the Urban League, sometime in the late 80’s.

He’d gotten it into his head that parents needed to read to their kids.

Well, he certainly did.

There’s a photo of me, somewhere, with Jack lying down on the couch, and me sitting on a pillow above his head. He’s holding the book that we both are reading.

So Jack had teamed up with his old buddy, and they were busy on a project involving filming parents reading a book, visible to the viewer, to their kids. At least that’s how I remember it. And since that had been Jack’s project-of-the-moment when he died, we had asked for donations to the program in lieu of flowers.

As a writer, Jack respected conciseness. He tended, however, to use the telephone as an instrument to explore what he thought. He would call his friend at the Urban League, get the voice mail, and then leave one, two or even three lengthy, pontificating messages. The Urban League guy wrote a warm tribute to Jack after he died, and finally confessed that most of the time, he had only listened to the concluding message.

Right—so it seemed to be a day organized around some simple themes: poverty, getting ahead, hard work and giving back. Which had been as the well the theme of the remarkable documentary I had seen the night before.

On the flimsiest of excuses, I had written an old high school classmate, Emily Auerbach, now a distinguished professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We hadn’t been close, but we knew each other. I was a cellist, she an oboist—we shared a lot of Shostakovich Fifth together.

Franny had mentioned her, once or twice, over the years and had attended some of her lectures. And she’s no lightweight. Margaret Drabble writes about Searching for Jane Austen, “Emily Auerbach's approach to Jane Austen is lively, engaging, and thoroughly modern. Like Austen, Auerbach wears her wide learning lightly and imparts a great deal of information in a most enjoyable manner.”

Right, Margaret Drabble—the heaviest of guns….

But I have, as you know, until the end of February 2013 to get my message out. You can have a good, comfortable death at the time and place of your choice. You don’t need to rot away in a nursing home. You can die at home with the cat on your bed on a spring afternoon—just as Franny did.

So it was time to call in whatever artillery seemed at hand. I tracked down Emily—not hard to do—and sent her an email.

Some time elapsed. She replied, apologizing for the delay. My email talking about the book I had written about the death of my mother had arrived…

…on the day Emily had buried her mother.

So it was one of those times that an email couldn’t do it. Time to phone. I did, stammered out an apology, and then began to watch the documentary for which Emily had sent me a link.

I’m happy to say that while I’ve been occupying myself with the daily trot and writing blog posts, some of my high school classmates are actually doing some real work. And no, not on Austen—which I’ve not read, but will—but on the south side of Madison. In a library—The Irwin A. and Robert D. Goodman Library. Didn’t know the library, but did recognize the building behind it.

The Madison Urban League.

Emily, it seems, never knew poverty, as I—knock on wood—have not. But her parents did, and were only able to escape it through the help of a remarkable institution, Berea College, which was free. So her parents, like Carlos’s and mine, had gone onward and upward, and now Emily was reaching out and giving a hand.

Or a handout. Or homework she had assigned and graded.

It’s called the Odyssey Project, and it’s a free, yearlong, fully accredited university course with the intention of getting people who never would have dreamed of going to the university…

…into the university.

And out, with a degree.

More than a degree. A changed life, or rather, lives. Because nothing happens in a vacuum. You’re a kid, and you watch your mother go from homelessness to university graduate. You think that doesn’t have an effect? Especially when she calls you on your skipping classes in high school.

She’s not big on subtlety, the Puerto Rican Goddess. She paints with a pretty big brush. Sometimes that’s best, I think. Sometimes the message really is simple. You can change lives. You can get ahead. If you’re sitting pretty now, stand up, look below you, reach down and give a hand.

Raf swears that there’s something unique about Wisconsin—its efficiency, its earnestness, its almost naïve belief that institutions and systems can work, and can get better. I scoff at the idea.

Until I see an old classmate in a room with thirty poor people on whom, as a colleague says, “she just won’t give up. She won’t let anyone slip away.”

And Raf passes the Kleenex to dry my tears.