Yo-Yo Ma was amazing last night at the Bushnell. His performance and that of the crew was a lesson in intensity and collaboration.

Up was Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor. Ma was typically intense. He’d sway right and left, leaning toward the first violin and others around the front and second circle, talking to them with his wood, eyes, his extreme expressions drawing smiles and nods of agreement from his partners. It was like watching an intense conversation between a crowd. The sound was just amazing.

The orchestra is a metaphor for the system enlivened by the possibility of collapse. It didn’t collapse. It held together with wiretight, temporary, and simultaneous agreement. For a moment, everyone was talking to one another.

Fiction writers everywhere know that for a month or three years of flash, the story must be the medium. Summaries are nothing.