Harp Column Blogs: Carl SwansonArchive

Well I hope you all enjoyed the Mildred Dilling saga.  When I decided to write it, I never dreamed it would end up so long.  I hadn't revisited those memories in a long time(she died 24 years ago), and a lot came flooding back.

A very small number of people got annoyed at some of the things I said.  I don't look upon what I wrote as a  'warts and all' accounting of her.  Reading it over again, I don't look at a single sentence as being critical of her, or in any way derogatory.  That's simply who she was, and to bring her personality to life, all of the things I said belong there.

I was listening to Public radio the other day, and someone was interviewed who is heading a project to interview as many people as possible who knew Leonard Bernstein well, and in particular, his childhood friends.  At one point this woman said, "you know, they are all getting up in years, and before too long there won't be anyone left.  We wanted to do this before it was too late."  Well, that's how I feel about what I wrote about Mildred.  There are other people who knew her much earlier in her life and under different circumstances, and I wish more of them would write what they know about her.

It's fascinating to me how some people have carved out a career for themselves with the harp.  I just rented a harp for a few days to a woman who was flying in from out west to do a 4 day job at a resort hotel on Cape Cod.  She plays on Cruise ships most of the time, and she plays 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, and never has music in front of her and never repeats her repertoire on a one or two week cruise.  She has 4,000 to 5,000 tunes to draw on and plays them all by ear or from memory.  Unbelievable.  My good friend Jan Jennings in Florida can do the same thing. And I know there are other harpists out there that can do it too.

Talk to you all soon.