Paamiut, Greenland Remote? What’s That? Last week I was in Paamiut, and Qaqortoq, two villages in Greenland, the biggest island in the world with a total population as meager as 56,000. The inhabitants are confined to dots of settlements around the coast, leaving inland blanketed with glaciers – just space and more space [...]
Almost twenty years ago I wrote a short story (Rezin’s Ratio) that I considered a tongue-in-cheek fantasy. The premise was to establish a numerical basis for a person’s career standing, a success index, as it were. As Roger Rezin, the protagonist, put it: “I will figure out ways to tick people off and see what [...]
I always voted to add my voice, however small, to those caring to preserve the values of the country that saved my life even before I was born, as stated in the first sentence of my recently published memoir (The Speed of Dark ): One of the most important and life-saving events of my existence [...]
The other day a friend of mine said that Daniel Dennet, a philosopher, considered language the primary difference between humans and animals. Although I had not read anything by Dennet, I strongly objected to this simplified view. My problem was that lots of animals have their own language: birds sing, whales make diverse sounds, bees [...]
No matter how well researched, a movie or book is a story with an autonomous existence and cannot resurrect the layered complexities and conflicts of a human being. The private, inner life makes me wonder to what extent our personal identity reflects our ultimate legacy: who or what determines who we are?
On April 17 next week, Papa’s birthday, I will be at the Colburn School of Music in Los Angeles to see a preview of the new documentary of my father: The Cellist: The Legacy of Gregor Piatigorsky, by Murray Grigor and Hamid Shams. The movie will be an important addition to the Piatigorsky Archive at [...]
