photoI went to San Diego last weekend to visit family. A friend of my daughter’s, who also happens to be a world class photographer, saw that I was wearing a turquoise  heart and immediately took his own necklace off and put it around my neck. He told me that the stone is sacred to the Navajo and that it would heal me.

This morning I pulled it out of my suitcase to show to my husband. We were admiring the variations of color and marbling in the stones. I noticed that one of them had a flaw where a piece had flaked off. The artist had polished it out and strung it with all the rest.

It struck me as a lesson in perfection. The whole is lovely and perfect even though the beads themselves are quite varied and each individual is is not perfect. They are held together by their relationship to each other and the fact that they are all turquoise.

I hope for my students to be able to understand that lesson for themselves and for their music. That they are part of something greater than themselves. That, in performance, if they are truly and honestly saying something with the composer, that statement will be perfect even if one or two notes are imperfect.

I hope I can understand that and live it too.

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