The Power and Frailty of Concentration

     I recall a scene from The Mary Tyler Moore Show in which Mary is trying to write a fast-breaking news bulletin and get it on the air in the two minutes left of air time; but her boss, Mr. Grant, is hovering over her shoulder, paralyzing her concentration. Of course, the story doesn't make it onto the news.

 

(Here is the entire episode; the scene to which I refer is near the start.)

 



     I know how Mary felt. Though I'm not a journalist, I did have to face a looming deadline once, when I was working at Houston Grand Opera. Someone, who shall remain nameless, was asked to write a piece in the program for Lucia di Lammermoor and, having put it off till the day of the deadline, he asked me to write it instead. I had about an hour before galleys went to the printer. We were in the middle of a staging rehearsal for which I was playing, but they excused me; so I locked myself away in the conference room and dashed off what was, I thought, a pretty decent piece about the ornamentation in Lucia, with special emphasis on the extended flute cadenza in the mad scene. It's amazing how adrenaline (or white-knuckled fear) can heighten one's powers of concentration. I don't know if I could have written a better piece, were I given more time.

     One would think that writing a blogpost is a more relaxed endeavor, since if there are deadlines they are only self-imposed, e. g., my "Music Monday" or "Saturday at the Opera" series; but even so, one may play fast and loose with them, even skip them, as I sometimes have. I have no boss hovering over my shoulder, no printer waiting (a human printer, that is). Yet, when inspiration sparks and the juices are flowing, my mother's call to dinner is an unwelcome interruption, and I'm afraid I tend to snap my response at her with the terseness of a Thomas Carlyle without the genius. My poor mother.

     Speaking of Carlyle -- Helene Hanff, in her delightful book Q's Legacy, says that he could write nowhere but in his "inner sanctum," built at the tippy-top of his house to his exacting specifications, which included soundproofing. Since Carlyle was Carlyle and I most certainly am not, I don't wonder that I'm able to write my little posts at the computer, which is situated smack-dab next to the living room television. At the moment, the TV is off, but if it were on it would make me no never mind. I have no critics to worry about, and my readership is somewhat (ahem) smaller than his. So I just clickety-clack away while Alex Trebek reads out one clue after another.

     In another of Hanff's books, can't remember which, she says that Bernard Shaw could write virtually anywhere -- in trains, cafés, etc. That's comforting to know, in the sense that brilliance -- or, in the case of us lesser mortals, competence -- need not always be coddled like a frail flower in order to bloom. Heck, I've written drafts of poems in coffee shops, doctor's waiting rooms, even McDonald's, some of my best poems, that eventually saw print. Just think of what gems I could produce in an environment like Carlyle's inner sanctum ....

     More than likely, I'd spend most of the day staring out the window and emerge at dinnertime not having written a thing. Concentration does not a genius make. But I'd settle for mere competence.