Once upon a time there was a girl called Mandy. Mandy lived by the sea and from the age of two her father would take her to the beach. From the beach it would take ages from them to reach the sea, but Mandy's father turned it into a game and they would run together towards the incoming waves. And then Mandy would hurl herself in and her father would gently teach her how to swim.
Before the age of three, and thanks to her dad, Mandy was able to swim by herself in the safe and shallow Irish Sea which, her father told her, was part of the far larger Atlantic Ocean, stretching all the way over to the United States of America. Yes, there were jelly fish and insects that stung, but these weren't dangerous.
And when she was five, Mandy would make a habit of crossing the street from her house (no traffic), clambering over the sand dunes and running towards the incoming sea, which, it seemed to her, was equally keen to embrace her in its gentle and soothing waves, warmed, as she had now learned, by the Gulf Stream flowing in from Mexico.
At five, Mandy fell in love for the first time when her school teacher put on a record of Brahms. Mandy was enveloped in the sheer emotional power and mystery of the great music. Mandy nagged her mother and father. She wanted so much to play a part in Brahms' creation.
Mandy's parents encouraged her to take up the piano. And from small beginnings and many hours of daily practice, starting at the crack of dawn, Mandy began to master the piano. Now Mandy had two more friends that were always there for her: the soothing sea and the majestic music that she was creating. And Mandy knew that she was part of this mystery which her mum and dad had enabled her to encounter.
When she was 10, Mandy was told by an expert in music that one day her piano-playing would give people a great deal of pleasure. Mandy thought about this. She had regarded music, like the sea, as a great comfort. She hadn't realised that her playing of Brahms might also be of benefit to others.
Mandy had learned a new lesson: playing for herself might be soothing and empowering, but was it enough? Mandy decided to take up the violin. She knew that she would find the violin difficult. For a start, she had 'piano hands'. But Mandy joined a youth orchestra. The choir master was strict and pretty scathing about Mandy's ability on the violin. But for Mandy there was now nothing greater in life than to play second fiddle in an average youth orchestra which met once a week in her home town. To listen to far better players and to be allowed to join in and learn from them was a joy like no other. And the final result was far greater than anything she might have achieved as a soloist on the piano.
In her teens, Mandy encountered other instrumentalists who played the cello and flute, the oboe and clarinet, and best of all, the viola. And she knew that her vocation was accompaniment. Accompaniment included all the positives of the sea – it allowed you to get carried away, but only through utilizing the arts of discipline, acute listening and attentiveness. Drowning was not part of the equation.
At 18 Mandy embarked on higher education and was laughed at and ridiculed. Didn't she know Brahms didn't really exist? He was simply a combination of atoms which had come together accidentally. And there was no such thing as music. It was simply a combination of vibrations which had no meaning whatsoever. All Mandy's childhood and young adult experiences were an illusion, they mocked, and all attempts at describing her reactions in any other way were puerile – a bit like Father Christmas. It was time for her to put away childish things and grow up.
As part of her university course, Mandy was sent away to another country where the arguments against her own experiences of life were even stronger. There was no meaning, she was told. Nothing exists at all. Everything is an illusion. And the only way to keep going is simply to follow the strong and discard the weak. But in this strange and violent country, Mandy discovered one tiny and much-despised group which loved the music of Mozart. So, once again, Mandy experienced her childhood sea, while accompanying the like-minded people in a university performance of The Magic Flute. And once again, Mandy was back in the calm waves of the Irish sea, together with her beloved father.
Soon after this Mandy returned to the country of her birth and got married. She had two children and a busy life. But every day she put aside fifteen minutes to meditate on her childhood experiences of the sea and another half an hour to practise the piano. And gradually Mandy found herself teaching music therapy to damaged children and encountered a number of new instrumentalists to accompany. Mandy was now fully aware of all the scientific and philosophical arguments against the validity of her own experiences – but she knew one thing – that the answer to most of life's problems is not to run away, but to become disciplined and skilled and immersed in the flow, just as she had been taught to do in the sea by her father.
Mandy tried to pass on this message to her own children and also to all the other children who came her way for music therapy lessons, and then to all the adults who sought her out as a teacher.
Finally, Mandy understood the words: 'In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth.... And G-d saw ... that it was good.' Because whatever the counter-arguments by the world's thinkers, as a swimmer and music-maker Mandy knew that the key to life is immersion. Time and time again Mandy had experienced that if you stand on the side-lines and watch the sea go by, the world remains for you truly 'formless and void'. She knew that the secret of overcoming the formlessness and void of life is to get stuck in, to conquer your fears. By getting stuck in, what was 'formless and void', a booming mass of confusion, turns into the greatest kind of symphony orchestra and this is what is meant by the biblical verse: 'And G-d saw ... that it was good.'
Dr Irene Lancaster is a Jewish academic, author and translator who has established university courses on Jewish history, Jewish studies and the Hebrew Bible.
