A Gracious Narcissism
It is said that Einstein once witnessed the spectacular fall of a construction worker; fallen from a multi-storey building, the worker miraculously survived. Einstein hastened to visit him at the earliest opportunity, for he had a pressing and specific question for him. The physicist’s question was: “What did you feel when you fell, dear sir”? The worker smiled and was silent for a moment. He could have answered in several ways. He could have said: “I was afraid, I thought of the misfortune of my wife, my children, my father, my mother, my friends, my brothers and sisters”. Or: “I have felt the whole burden of my actions, of my sins that I repent”. Or again: “I regret nothing”. But the workman’s response was just as remarkable as the physicist’s question: “I felt, sir, that I had no weight,” he replied. The anecdote is reported by one of the master’s students. Regardless of the fate of this worker who miraculously survived the accident, the famous physicist had got the answer he was looking for and he had gone where he could get it. But, wondering the choreographer envying the worker for the fame his fall drew upon him, could the short dialogue even have taken place if, instead of a worker, Einstein had met one of these dance masters who are still lured by matters of gravity? The scholar hardly seems to have been concerned with the choreographers in matters of gravity, having sought the opinion of an unprejudiced individual who felt he had no weight when falling. Einstein would have seen Martha Graham dance, other sources report, as no memorable dialogue is found to this effect, but a praise or two addressed to the choreographer whom, perhaps, he knew she was grappling with the gracious narcissism to which she owed her genius.
Text adapted from The Great Discovery of Free Float. In Wheeler, John A. (1990, 11).
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