Reflections of an American Harpsichordist Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of Ralph Kirkpatrick

158 ❧ chapter fifteen
and inspiration in the experiences of physical movement and gesture, of talk-
ing and singing. In its way, any functioning of the imagination represents a
pilgrimage to an inner source. The hearing of a good performance is excelled
in inspirational value only by the hearing of a bad performance that provokes
one to do better.
In short, anything from which one can learn anything is in its way a source
worthy of a pilgrimage. But sources as we speak of them are never static—they
are constantly fl owing. If they dry up, we risk the fate of those plants that grow
near springs, or near running water, or any of those pebbles that look so won-
derful when seen while still wet and might lose all their charm and indeed
their very life when the water dries up. This is what can happen when sources
are consulted only for the factual, unimaginative, dry use of historical informa-
tion rather than when they are used in search of that constantly changing and
developing and never-stopping thing which we call inspiration.
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