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flaws,and thus he transcends them.” He closed his eyes then, nodding slowly and pursing his lips in thought.
    I was barely ten when he gave me this lesson, so unfortunately the greater part of his advice went over my head. When he offered these obscure lectures, which was fairly often, I would make an effort to seem interested, but I was really only waiting for him to give me concrete suggestions. I wanted solutions to the musical problems, not observations about spiritual poise. Eventually he showed me that I could make the extension if I released my thumb from behind the neck of the cello at just the right moment—a simple adjustment.
    I have been trying to find creative ways to make use of my hearing problem ever since it began, but without any signs of transcending it. Maybe von Kempen was only talking about certain kinds of shortcomings. Perhaps if he had lived a little longer he would have recommended I stop playing the cello and find another outlet for my creative energies.
    I spoke to Martin, our senior violin instructor, to see if he knew how I could get out of jury duty. We have a money pool going in the department that will be won by the first person who can, without purposely trying to do so, bring up a subject in conversation that Martin isn’t shockingly informed about. I’ve heard him give advice about living wills, tax-free investments, computer software and new types of surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, which is the bane of so many pianists and string musicians; once, when I told him I was thinking about buying a new car, he remembered how
Consumer Reports
rated the model I was interested in. Sure enough, when I mentioned jury duty his eyes lit up.
    The only drawback to asking for Martin’s advice is that hedoesn’t quite stop at the answer to your question. If you ask what
Consumer Reports
thought of the Ford Probe he’ll tell you, but not without also telling you how it rated every other car in that price range, mentioning along the way that
Car and Driver
came to entirely different conclusions. True to form, he managed to launch himself from my problem with jury duty into a vigorous critique of the jury system itself. The gist of his commentary was that while the original concept of being judged by one’s peers had been a nice idea, it clearly wasn’t designed with today’s society in mind. “In the eighteenth century,” he explained, “this country had a small population of highly educated people. Now we have a huge population, and most of them are poorly educated and don’t know how to think for themselves.”
    I asked if he didn’t think that having ordinary citizens sit on juries helps keep the law in touch with common sense and with the community’s sense of justice, but he asked me right back who I thought ordinary citizens were. “Look at how many people vote Republican,” he lamented, “or how many picket abortion clinics, or how many read
USA Today
! There’s ordinary citizens for you, Reinhart. You want their brand of common sense? I’d rather have a judge settle my case, I can tell you that.”
    As a rule, I try to avoid talking with anyone about the collapse of society. My own view is that apathy is an acceptable, if not admirable, stance because it actively reduces frustration and despair and to that extent makes the world a better place. As soon as I could get a word in I told Martin that in spite of my feeble defense of the jury system I wanted to avoid participating in it and wondered if he knew how I could avoid serving. He said that it would be easy for me toget out of it; all I had to do was say that a graduate student of mine was giving a thesis recital and that he would be severely inconvenienced if I was pulled away for any length of time. I merely had to go to the courthouse the first day of my summons, Martin assured me, state my excuse to the clerk and they would let me go.

3
    A few weeks after Yo-Yo Ma’s visit to the university, and just before my