Remaining alert can keep us...
Illustration
Remaining alert can keep us out of trouble, and ready for what is sure to come upon us. Andre Previn learned that lesson early in life. As a teenager, the man who became a famous composer, pianist, and conductor, used to play the piano at a cinema that specialized in showing old silent movies. For him, the job didn't last long. He remembered one afternoon he was pounding away the appropriate music for a '20s Flaming Youth flick. He didn't watch the screen, and failed to notice that the movie short had ended and the main feature had begun. He said, "I was enthusiastically playing a Charleston during the scene depicting the Last Supper of Christ when the manager of the theater came storming down the aisle. Two minutes later I was unemployed."
