Les Preludes

Jared Kushner - The Prelude

Franz Liszt wrote a tone poem (musical "story" if you will) titled Les Preludes (1854). It is well known if you watch the Lone Ranger as parts of it are used as the incidental music in background.   

In the score, Liszt wrote:

 "What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown Hymn, the first and solemn note of which is intoned by Death?—Love is the glowing dawn of all existence; but what is the fate where the first delights of happiness are not interrupted by some storm, the mortal blast of which dissipates its fine illusions, the fatal lightning of which consumes its altar; and where is the cruelly wounded soul which, on issuing from one of these tempests, does not endeavor to rest his recollection in the calm serenity of life in the fields? Nevertheless man hardly gives himself up for long to the enjoyment of the beneficent stillness which at first he has shared in Nature's bosom, and when "the trumpet sounds the alarm", he hastens, to the dangerous post, whatever the war may be, which calls him to its ranks, in order at last to recover in the combat full consciousness of himself and entire possession of his energy".

Liszt was famous and infamous; considered to be the greatest piano virtuoso of his time, a genius, flawed, but underneath it all was someone who was marvelous at his craft.  When he "changed gears" a bit to be the traveling virtuoso and take on that persona, he was well aware of what that meant and the enormous amount of work, practice and learning he would have to do in order to achieve what he sought.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Mr. Kushner; by all accounts bright and gifted but thrust into a world that either he didn't want or didn't have the slightest clue what was involved in walking in it. None. He reminds me of someone who just fell into his life, money, gadfly legacy education, a few hundred million just to make him comfortable.  Marrying the president's daughter was icing on the cake;  just another hallway of wealth and power.

Now Jared is in a heap of trouble because all the things that he didn't learn how to do, didn't grind out in learning and practice and were possibly beneath his fair haired boy persona...well they are knocking at his door and if he doesn't get how much worse this will become before it resolves, that this is just "Les Preludes" to his troubles and God help him. 

God help him because everyone of us "grunts" who had to learn a skill or a body of knowledge - I mean practice it until your fingers hurt or your brain explodes...well we won't lift a pity's finger to get him out of this pickle.