Down to the Short Strokes

Babi Yar will be performed on Sunday. We've been living with this work since the end of August. It has had a deep impact upon me. After performance of the first movement in September, we've turned to the next 4. As we've worked through them, their meaning has deepened. Babi Yar is a story of cruelty and resilience. The human spirit survived Hitler and Stalin, and other barbarous tyrants before and after. Its themes: genocide, resilience, the consistency and steadfastness of women who endure despite oppressive and disheartening circumstances; the pervasive fear in a totalitarian world to speak truth to power; and finally, the misunderstood prophets, people of vision - Galileo, Newton, Pasteur, Tolstoy - who are scorned and destroyed in their own time out of the institutional narrow-mindedness and reactionary behavior. Shostakovich and Yevtushenko make profound comment on the human condition.

We as Americans have a history of shameful genocide of Indians in our own land. The McCarthy era and the post-9/11 world steeped ordinary people in fear of their neighbors, encouraged by an administrative so narrow in its view and so closed to finding solutions. Let the prophets of our times step forward and help us find our way back to the path of humaneness, justice and peace.