A study in contrasts

Tuesday night I was flipping around the channels, looking for some background noise as I puttered around the apartment doing some chores. ( Let me inform you dear reader that we don't have cable, just regular old broadcast TV so flipping consists of six channels.) I flipped through the regular crap of pseudo drama, news crap, Bob Hope special, MTV2, American Idol rehash on Fox, and then a true gem!

On PBS they were broadcasting the Mostly Mozart Festival Live from Lincoln Center featuring a young Chinese pianist named Lang Lang. He took to the stage and he and the orchestra began to weave a most amazing and beautiful tapestry of music! Lang Lang was passionate and amazing, the orchestra perfect, the music, Mendholsson! I flipped up one station to hear some 13year old girl trying to belt out a Donna Summers tune. I was simply struck with the juxtaposition. On one channel, something beautiful and lovely and amazing and that should be enjoyed by more Americans more often. On the other, corporate schlock scooped out to the masses with ice cream scoops. How could people willing subject themselves to a performance that consists of a host who doesn't even want to be there and braying bleached teens trying to make it BIG when a 21 year old virtuoso from China was playing his heart out with great emotion and skill and creating something truly beautiful?

So ask yourself what beauty you've seen today. Not titillation. Not lust. Not slick marketing and political glad handling. Just beauty. Go out and find some if you need to or (even better) create it yourself and marvel in a world where such wonderful things exist.