Great musical talent is probably DEMONISM? Old publications say so!

by Terry 15 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  adamah

  Unfortunately, the WT was kinda right when it said this:

  If the child has any help from the unseen world (and he probably has), that help comes from the demons. Quite probably in the same category is the prodigy mentioned in the NEW YORK TIMES of November 26,1931.

  In Ruth's case, the 'demon' was actually her own father, an abusive stage-parent:

  From http://articles.philly.com/2007-08-12/entertainment/25230855_1_serkin-concert-japan-s-nhk-symphony

  What's amazing is that her storehouse seems to contain little of the bad stuff that came her way. From an early age, the Sacramento-born Slenczynska was made to practice nine hours a day. Her violinist father, Josef, a Polish emigr, was bent on her having a music career from day one; he beat her mercilessly for keyboard mistakes - and even for bad reviews, over which she had no control.

  But few musicians had such great teachers. Spending most of her childhood on the East Coast and in Europe, she was at one point simultaneously studying with Cortot and Rachmaninoff in Paris, though neither knew she was working with the other, nor would they have been happy if they'd found out.

  "The whole situation was comic," she wrote in her 1957 autobiography Forbidden Childhood (Doubleday & Co.). "Here was Father telling the world that he was my only teacher. Here was Mr. Cortot proudly calling himself my teacher. Here was Mr. Rachmaninoff denying that he was teaching me. My visits were social calls. . . ."

  Though audiences were amazed that someone so small could play the big concertos of Liszt and Chopin (in Berlin, the press speculated that she was a midget), her father's orders to go to interpretive extremes destroyed her credibility with critics.

  Back in California in 1940, her career seemingly ended, she enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, where she eventually earned a degree in psychology. That sector of the real world felt pretty alien: "I was 16, felt 50 and looked like 12."

  In 1944, she eloped with fellow student George Born, trailed by her father's parting shot: "You can't play two notes again without me."

  "As far as he was concerned, I didn't exist," she recalled.

  What she discovered, simply, was "I could exist."

  Adam
• 

  DATA-DOG

  It's probably true. When I discovered Bruce Lee in my teens, I read every book, watched every film. I've always had a knack for that stuff anyways.. It wasn't long before I was 3" punching through boards and doing finger-tip push-ups. I was "acting" like him, channeling if you will. I could turn it on and off at will. I am pretty sure it was the Demons. Or I am just a thespian, trapped in a man's body.. HEYY, OHHH!!!! ( rim-shot!!!) I will be here all week!!!

  DD
• 

  EndofMysteries

  I wonder if Ruth Slenzynaski can sue the society for slander, lies, public humilation, etc for that article calling her demon possessed?
• 

  LoisLane looking for Superman

  Ruth S's playing was beautiful.

  It brought tears to my eyes. I believed the lies I was told since childhood. I had a long list of things I was going to accomplish when I became "perfect". Being a concert pianist was one of them. My brother could play Rachmaninov when he was a teenager. I never tried.

  Obviously the WT's bad press, did not detract Ruth from her goals.

  LoisLane
• 

  BluesBrother

  Typical J W response..If they do not understand it and do not like it.......it must be the demons!
• 

  adamah

  EOM said-

  I wonder if Ruth Slenzynaski can sue the society for slander, lies, public humilation, etc for that article calling her demon possessed?

  Nah, if only because the statute of limitations would be a bit of a problem, at this point.

  Lois said-

  It brought tears to my eyes. I believed the lies I was told since childhood. I had a long list of things I was going to accomplish when I became "perfect". Being a concert pianist was one of them. My brother could play Rachmaninov when he was a teenager. I never tried. Obviously the WT's bad press, did not detract Ruth from her goals.

  Well, if it makes you feel any better, even talented people who've spent their entire lives practicing and playing cannot play like that, and would bow before her talent.

  But certainly her spirit of overcoming adversity and abuse speaks to all of us.

  I found this article interesting:

  http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com/2009/07/when-eddy-interviewed-ruth-slenczynska.html

  Friday, July 10, 2009

  When Eddy Interviewed Ruth Slenczynska:

  I think about Ruth Slenczynska every year. She was born in 1925 and (I believe) is still alive. In 1957, she was about as famous as she could get. She was recording and concertizing, and her (ghost-written?) autobiography, Forbidden Childhood, was much talked about. You can listen to some fragments of her marvelous playing here (but be sure to read the terms and conditions on that page; I have no idea whether they state the law accurately).

  She had been an awesome child prodigy pianist, and she developed into a very mature pianist. The pressures of being a child prodigy got to her, and she did not perform between (according to Wikipedia) 1940 and 1954.
  
  Her autobiography told the familiar story of a father driving her much too hard to succeed, and a family giving all its love to their other children while expecting her to practice and perform. For me, the most memorable anecdote in her book concerns her father's parsimoniousness: when the two of them traveled to her concerts, he always shared a hotel room with her. But one day the clerk listened to her father order a single room; and then the clerk said, "the young lady will require her own room." And after that she always had her own room.
  
  I can't remember Eddy's last name. He was a friendly, middle-aged fellow with some knowledge of classical music, and he talked his way into running an interview show on one of New York's classical radio stations. My (pianist) aunt Lucy knew him and regarded Eddy as a bit of a confidence man. Of course, in 1957, there had to be an interview with Ruth Slenczynska. I believe her recording of all 24 of the Chopin Peludes Op. 28 had recently been issued to acclaim. In the interview, Eddy asked Ruth which prelude was her favorite. She replied that she had no favorite. Surely, he said, she must prefer one of them. She replied that they were her little children, and she was their mother. And like any parent, she loved them equally. Eddy could see where this was going, and he gently commented that a parent might prefer one child to another. "No," she said, "a parent always loves all the children the same."
  
  Thinking most definitely of Slenczynska's autobiography -- most of his radio listeners were doing the same, I'm sure -- Eddy said, "I've heard of cases where a parent might love one child more than another." Ruth Slenczynska went right on denying that such a thing could ever happen, throwing the accuracy of her own book into doubt.
  
  By the way, I'm older and wiser now, and I can see how Ruth Slenczynska could have ignored her own painful family experience while insisting that any mother will love her children all the same. What seemed embarrassing to me then, now seems poignant."

  Of course, Ruth was likely speaking proscriptively, saying no parent should love one child more than another, i.e. playing favorites, which is likely reflective of how she felt it should've been in her own childhood. Being childless, she was seemingly breaking the cycle with her "children", her music.