Paris is About Life Learning to Cherish Hope

One year ago today, on 13 November 2015, terrorists struck Paris.  I was on a plane as it happened, flying from London to Vienna with friends from Cambridge for a weekend of concerts and Christmas markets.  We were completely unaware of what had happened until our landing at the Vienna airport.  Our wheels touched down, and a slew of text messages and emails began inundating my phone:

“Where are you?”

“Are you okay?”

“Do you have any friends in Paris?”

My first concern was for my friend Renée, a West Point classmate attending grad school at Sciences Po in Paris.  She was thankfully alright and you can read her reflections on the attacks, written just after the attacks, here.

Moving into Vienna, we soon discovered that there was a UN summit on the Syrian crisis that weekend.  Police presence was heightened everywhere throughout the busy city.  Diplomats moved between talks as locals and tourists wandered the streets – all welcoming the weekend and the just-beginning season of mulled wine and the “Weihnachtsmärkte” Christmas markets.  For my group, though – and I suspect for many others in Vienna that evening – the atmosphere was more sedate… marred by the fresh news of what had just happened in Paris.

We spent the next day exploring the city and had made plans in the evening to attend a concert at the Musikverein.  Sir Simon Rattle, an English conductor, was leading the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra through Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.  We were in the cheap standing section far in the back of the decadent concert hall.  The seats were filled largely with UN dignitaries; the concert had been selected months earlier as the recreational activity for the summit attendees.

Just before the symphony began, there was a moment of silence to commemorate the victims of the attacks, followed by a short speech by the Prime Minister of Austria (in attendance at the concert, unbeknownst to us until he took the podium).  Sir Simon took his place for a short speech of his own – dedicating the performance to the victims.

The Ninth, he said, was Beethoven’s musical expression of a journey from darkness into light.  Created despite the onset of his own deafness, his symphony was a harrowing and yet ultimately hopeful commentary on mankind’s eventual triumph even in the midst tragedy.  Beethoven completed its composition almost two centuries before the Paris attacks but yet it remains one of the most-played concert pieces in the world – an unfortunately fitting tribute to victims of terrorism.

That concert – just more than an hour of music – marks the only time I have ever cried during a musical performance.  I’d listened to portions of the Ninth before, but never the entire symphony at once.  By the final movement – the unification of the orchestra and chorus in the triumphant Ode to Joy – I was weeping… for the music, for the victims, and for the message that they imparted together.

My takeaway, one year later: cherish hope, even in spite of the darkness that seems at times to creep into our lives.

Excerpt, Ode to Joy, Friedrich Schiller, 1785

Thanks again to Tania – for encouraging me to record this memory.

Photo credit: Etienne Laurent, EPA