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FeaturesThere is an old proverb that goes “Play the piano daily and stay sane.” For me, the main word of this proverb is daily. Playing the piano daily means inevitable accomplishment, and, without a sense of accomplishment, life is an impoverished journey. Machines have taken us away from our hands. In his last days, Rachmaninoff continually practiced a composition he never performed. One of his last statements was: “Farewell, my dear hands.” Today, we are starved for a deep contact with our hands. The poet Edward Dahlberg felt “our hands are already very stupid and morose. What can we do with them? What do we do with them?” Let’s get back to our hands—they are craving good work. At one time, the terms “handmade” and “handcrafted” meant a great deal. In schools, the young are no longer taught to write in script. Handwriti ...
Subscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 30 February 2012, on page 17 Copyright © 2013 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Let-s-tickle-the-ivories-7274
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The great famine before China's Cultural Revolution killed millions. Yang Jisheng took it upon himself to make sure the world knew about it. by Charles Hill He was an eighteenth-century Irish statesman, but Edmund Burke still has plenty to say today. Reinhold Niebuhr was a public intellectual and a theologian who still has a deep influence on both the right and the left.
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