Introduction | Violins in Flight

A Life of Music & Flying & More

Dear Friends,

I hope you'll bear with me while I try to figure out how to operate this website. In some ways it feels more complicated than flying a Boeing 757!

I suppose it's best if I start here....

My father was a concert violinist. Not surprisingly, I began playing the violin when I was six and performed in front of audiences for several years. My beautiful mom would have been pleased if I'd become a concert violinist. Instead I became an airline pilot. How this happened is explained in Violins in Flight: The Chapters of a Pilot's Life on Instruments.

You'll have to read my book in order to connect the dots, but let me first mention a dot, a moment, that changed my life.

In 1960 in the midst of a football game, I wound up with a compound fracture of my right femur bone as well as a mangled knee, and spent three weeks in a hospital. The subsequent consequences of these gruesome injuries couldn't have been foretold.

In 1962, I attended Temple University, mainly because my mom wanted me to get a college education, given that neither she nor my father went to college. I dropped out of Temple twice but somehow managed to graduate after five years.

From 1967 through 1971, I worked as a journalist, a magazine writer, a documentary filmmaker and an advertising copywriter.

In 1972, while nearly penniless, I was hired as a followup interviewer by Eagleville Hospital, where I basically lived among drug and alcohol addicts, not to mention along with a motorcycle gang.

In 1975, I earned a pilot's license and three years later was hired by a commuter airline. I spent the next three decades flying over much of the world with several legendary airlines, the last of which being North American Airlines.

In the midst of all this was music. A lot of music.

And music was how my life started.

And music is how my book starts.

And yet, as I wrote in the book's preface, Violins in Flight doesn't have all that much to do with music, violins or flying. Maybe that's why I take literary comfort from Robert Pirsig's Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The brilliant Mr. Pirsig stated that his book didn't have all that much to do with Zen or motorcycles, and that—as the saying goes—sometimes you can't judge a book by its cover or its title. Come to think of it, To Kill a Mockingbird doesn't have all that much to do with birds, does it?

So what is Violins in Flight about?

Well, nearly every chapter, in one way or another, has to do with the violence witnessed by a child in his home and how the consequences of that violence shaped his life. Only the violin, with its incomparable range, could give onomatopoeic voice to the child's emotions of fear and despair, hatred and love. Only the violin could sound so much like violence.

That violence, which used to be called wife beating, is now known as domestic abuse or domestic violence or a domestic situation. It's like describing a thunderstorm as a rain shower. Thunderstorms are not rain showers.

Beyond that, and I swear this is true, the first time I heard the inane, mindless term domestic violence, I figured it had something to do with hostile acts perpetrated by domestic workers—maids—against the families who employed them. No child would ever describe the brutality witnessed in his home as having anything to do with domestic issues.

Although my book offers no advice or solutions, it does give readers much to think about...and even more to feel about. As one reader wrote me: "Your book touched my soul." That may be just enough to give a wife and mother the incentive to change course.

Let me add that I make no apologies for being sexist concerning this issue. The thousands of women who'll be beaten and terrorized by their husbands tonight have no need for the beatings to be codified with a gender neutral term in order that the one man being beaten by his wife tonight can accuse her of domestic abuse.

A thunderstorm is a thunderstorm, not a rain shower. Every pilot knows the difference between the two. Wife beating is wife beating, not domestic abuse. Every wife who lives in terror of her husband—every child who lives in terror of his father—knows the difference between the two.

I now offer you the words taken from Chapter 61 of Violins in Flight.

"My father received countless standing ovations. I received one, on Thanksgiving Day 1960 when I broke my leg and was carried off the field by my teammates. To the best of my knowledge, my mom never received a standing ovation. Life is unfair. Mothers deserve more standing ovations, don't you think?

"And maybe one day in a concert hall that's standing room only, fathers who brutalized mothers will receive a standing ovation of silence from their children, the children who, like trees in a forest, never make a sound."

As I continue to learn how to operate and enhance this website, maybe I'll be able to come up with new features and perhaps fill in some of the gaps in my book and my life. For now, I appreciate your clicking on this website and hope you'll feel free to add your thoughts about music and flying...and life.

Marc