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Chloe Veltman: how culture will save the world

Alan Rusbridger’s “Play It Again” Makes Me Want To Attempt Impossible Things

January 29, 2014 by Chloe Veltman

220px-Alan_Rusbridger

Whenever I feel overwhelmed and overworked, all I need to do is think of Alan Rusbridger.

I just finished reading The Guardian editor’s lovely, heart-opening memoir, Play It Again: Why Amateurs Should Attempt the Impossible, in which Rusbridger comes across as being a disconcerting combination of human and superhuman at the same time.

Rusbridger is a newspaper editor by day — and, as it generally turns out, night — and an amateur pianist by whatever few minutes he can squeeze into his relentless schedule in between the never-ending tsunami waves of the news cycle.

The book chronicles Rusbridger’s Sysiphean attempt to master a fiendishly difficult, ten-minute piece by Chopin, the “Ballade Op 23,” all the while battling a hair-raising stampede of massive breaking news stories including the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the ever-evolving Wikileaks coverage.

As a rookie editor myself taking on my first big project — the launch and leadership of Colorado Public  Radio’s new arts bureau — and an amateur oboist and singer, I connect strongly to Rusbridger’s narrative. His daily push to manage a few minutes of piano practice amid the demands of his hectic day job make me feel like I’m not alone in my quest to eek out a little time for music in the scurry of everyday life.

The book also makes me realize that as busy as I think I am, my level of stress and productivity is nothing on Rusbridger’s — a man who manages to fit in 20 minutes of Chopin almost every day even while facing off against media empires, parachuting into war zones to free correspondents under hostage, writing leaders for The Guardian, appearing before millions of viewers on network TV and making key decisions about the future of the media.

What boggles the mind is how on earth the man manages to also find time to keep such a careful diary of his pianistic progress, interview so many famous pianists and other experts, and produce a book at the end of it all. He must have a very patient family. And a very good personal assistant.

Speaking of family, the only thing about the book that puzzles me is how absent Rusbridger’s people are is from its pages. I don’t envy his wife and kids, who only appear in passing with a handful of brief mentions. Between the news cycle and the piano, I don’t suppose they saw much of their husband and father for a good long while.

I learned a lot from this book not just about its author’s peccadilloes, but also about the joys and importance of amateurism (a topic that I explore myself in relation to singing in a forthcoming Oxford University Press book of essays devoted to the vocal arts), time management, the history and mechanics of the piano,  Chopin, and the composer’s challenging but beloved first “Ballade.”

Play It Again: Why Amateurs Should Attempt the Impossible, galvanizes me, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, to attempt as many “impossible things before breakfast” as I possibly can.

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Chloe Veltman

...is the Senior Arts Editor at KQED (www.kqed.org), one of the U.S.'s most prominent public media organizations. Chloe returns to the Bay Area following two years as Arts Editor at Colorado Public Radio (www.cpr.org), where she was tapped to launch and lead the state-wide public media organization's first ever multimedia culture bureau. A former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow (2011-2012) and Humanities Center Fellow (2012-2013) at Stanford University, Chloe has contributed reporting and criticism to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, BBC Classical Music Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, WQXR and many other media outlets. Chloe was also the host and executive producer of VoiceBox, a syndicated, weekly public radio and podcast series all about the art of the human voice (www.voicebox-media.org), which ran for four years between 2009 and 2013. Her study about the evolution of singing culture in the U.S. is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Check out Chloe's website at www.chloeveltman.com and connect with her on Twitter via @chloeveltman. [Read More …]

lies like truth

These days, it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fantasy. As Alan Bennett's doollally headmaster in Forty Years On astutely puts it, "What is truth and what is fable? Where is Ruth and where is Mabel?" It is one of the main tasks of this blog to celebrate the confusion through thinking about art and perhaps, on occasion, attempt to unpick the knot. [Read More...]

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