Point of View: In Concert

    There are some days when you feel that you’re up to anything, at the top of your game.

    Is it the coffee? I would say yes. I feel confident despite having no particular success to point to — all the leaves I raked and hauled last week are back again. And I know I have yet to achieve a state of grace, all the more marked because I forgot once everyone had come out onto the street following a performance in a Manhattan church last weekend of Benjamin Britten’s opera “Noye’s Fludde,” based on a 15th-century miracle play about Noah’s Ark, to ask where God was so that I could get His autograph.

    Had I the nerve, I would have asked Him also about His promise to Noah that there would be no more floods.

    The opera was performed by an admirable cast most of whose singers, including my 8-year-old granddaughter, were blind. Blessed with perfect pitch, it’s also evident she has a theatric sense inasmuch as she, though one of the mice, commandeered the most prominent position in the prow of the ark on the altar stage.

    Many of the singers were led up the aisle by sighted partners, to applause, for their courage and for their refusal to remain on the sidelines in this game of life, a stance with which we know Maya is fully in accord.

    Her younger sister, Zora, radiates joy, which is said to be a fleeting thing in this world, though it seems to be pretty much of a constant with her. I hope it always will be, and I imagine the music Maya may make now and in the future will bring joy not only to her but to others, to wit, that because of her courage she will triumph.

    “Making music in community is a powerful way that we are formed as human beings,” the organist, Paul Vasile, said in the program. “Through the experience of participating in a band or orchestra, through choral or chamber music, we are invited into a heightened awareness of others, to deeper listening, to be fully present to the possibility of the moment.”

    To be fully present to the possibility of the moment, to listen so well, could well be a precursor to joy, which perhaps is more fully expressed in concert with one another, as the organist said, rather than limited to the confines of one’s caffeinated self.

    Joy can be experienced rather frequently, I think, in those moments when you’re of a generous spirit and not weighed down by overweening pride — when you feel both bold and connected. I wish courage and joy, then, for both girls, since coffee cannot be depended on in every instance.