Maestro suffers savage knife attack in the Bronx
NewsThe latest misfortune of Dante Santiago Anzolini, former music director of the Guayaquil Symphony Orchestra in Ecuador:
It all started last Tuesday, September 19th, some minutes before 6 pm. As I was leaving a shop after buying some laundry detergent, I greeted a small baby seated on a stroller -placed a feet away from the exit. As I was already outside, an unknown person came behind me, pushed me violently, and shouted unrecognizable epithets to me, and some seconds later stabbed me on my left arm with a knife. Then he ran away. He was small and thin, looked weak, fragile, but seemed out of control – that is why I decided not to react physically to him. But that decision could have caused a worse consequences. It certainly doomed me.
Many witnesses helped me stopping the abundant hemorrhage with an improvised tourniquet -a blue sweater my son gave me as a present, which was inundated with blood, as my entire body was red. As I insisted to my unknown helpers, somebody called #911, and after a minute the super fast Mt Vernon Police appeared (see photo), and with amazing preparedness they took me to the Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx (see photo). An entire group of nurses and doctors -about twenty people- was already waiting for me. They asked me all types of questions about my feelings, pains, symptoms, and worries. Then somebody called for a MRI scanning.
There are few things worse than not feeling you own hand, as if it was a dead piece of hanging meat. If you happen to be a musician, your fingers are your most valuable treasure, your single fortune, your tools for doing what you do, your life-long passion, and.. well, your means for paying your bills. I must affirm that after the stabbing my hand felt just dead, I could not move it.
The scanning showed that most probably my unknown enemy had cut the radial nerve, which functions a the direct connection between our brain, and our fingers through our wrist. Thus, that was the reason why I was not able to feel my wrist, let alone moving the left hand at all. The entire mechanism of piano playing is based on the wrist’s positioning. you cannot play your violin, you can’t do anything. They ordered an urgent operation, a doctor came to ask me for my signed consent, they rapidly pushed my stretcher towards the anesthesia quarters. The marvelous surgeon Doctor Sokol was transparently clean and forward: she said that even if she does a great job finding the two separated segments, and tight them, nobody may assure that my hand would ever be 100% functional.
At that point i did try to comprehend why my unknown foe would decide to attack me, and deprive me of my left arm. He would not probably imagine that my arm serves me to play bass on the piano, improvise rhythm in jazz standards, compose, accompany singers, etc, it also defines tuning on the violin, give meaningful gestures for expression to orchestras and choruses of three continents. He seemed dexterous with a knife. I spent my life using my arms and hands to play some instruments and to conduct other musicians. We could say that we both -my unexpected adversary and me- have exercised different living tactics.
Three hours later I woke up feeling a calm dizziness, while an assistant nurse waved her hand informing me that great Doctor Sokol performed a successful intervention on the wound. As she had explained earlier, the incision was to be much longer than the cut my attacker made. I stayed in the Jacobi Hospital until Friday evening, under the wonderful professional care of doctors and nurses. I came back home some hours ago, feeling that there is some apparent hope: except for typing with one hand, and practicing piano with only five fingers, my daily routine is now ‘only’ plagued by countless actions I cannot perform, and everyday chores I am not able to complete. Music making is now an unfulfilled desire, an impossible dream, an urgent wish. Composing is somehow possible but not super ideal. Normal playing on my instruments is just impossible,
Why did this impressive disaster happen? How come this is not exceptional, as we all get to read about other similar attacks on TV news or in social nets posts? I have read about a bunch of similar incidents, and now I became a victim of a real crime…How is it possible that some unknown character turns to be a sudden enemy, moved and conditioned by his own altered perception? Why is it so that people tend to react with such a strong hostility on actions that exist only in their minds?
I would exercise my respectful take on this issue, as I am now part of this criminal situation. We live in an era where society’s functioning has become conditioned by a large and complex set of individual perceptions.
Then we all see and read those perceptions multiplied by thousands of repeated observations -an avalanche of images coming to your cellular or laptop. This overweight of aggrandized news, minute knowledge, unknown yellow press scandals, personal assessments, surprising stories and fake news give us larger information than ever in history.
All this information has not served us for finding peace, or for progressing in some more humane way. We have as many violent situations as ever. Mountains of digital data could not diminish sociopath hate, abominable racism, or atrocious revenges against people you never met, know, or are able to infer or imagine their feelings or ideologies. The blatant sin is comparable to a war: one does not even know the enemy as an individual and unique person with feelings and ideas, but soldiers damage and ultimately kill her/him anyway.
We all have read books about diverse mechanisms of interaction among human beings. ranging from peaceful normality to fallible chaos bordering on destruction. If analyzed within a rational order, it may define an infinite number of possibilities, according to a numerous sets of participants who act under many different ethic codes.
Out of uncountable thousand chances my case shows some random person who condensed hate and transformed it in outright violence, for whatever justified lie or false creed. That action, if replicated, could be performed by an individual, or be a result of an organized group of people. They may go to the extreme of taking your life. Or else you are ‘lucky’, and go to urgent surgery, with the possible result of loosing you profession like a magic curse, an unwelcome hex.
This has happened to me for no reason, as a result of a violent action, either an acted lie as functional strategy or else based on some wrong individual perception of me, an unknown guy up to the second when somebody decides to scream at me. It would be laughable as a thought, almost a caricature of animality, but it almost turned into my unexpected death.
Some friends think that it was a setup by a gang -and then it went wrong. It looks impressive that there are ideologies that define crime with abstruse reasonings based on rarefied assumptions: how the entire society is guilty of some person’s crime: it is, again, a perception fallacy. How do you, my reader, perceive reality, and how important is your perception as supposed to logic, and ethics? your answer may be related to one of the most overused justifications for criminal behavior.
Very sorry to read this. Best wishes to Maestro Anzolini for a complete recovery.
my sincere thanks.
DSA
The attack actually happened in Mount Vernon, which is not part of the Bronx or part of New York City. It’s a municipality north of the Bronx border that is in Westchester County. They took him to Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx for treatment, because it was the best hospital in the area.
Right Bill, and Mt Vernon is more dangerous than the Bronx in my experience as a resident of New Ro………..I wish Maestro a full recovery. This sort of thing happens all too often (and knife crime is off the charts in the UK too).
thanks for typing the clarification. warmly DSA
He certainly is prolix for typing with only one hand!
Why do so many people on this site find humor in personal tragedy? Are they just to self-absorbed to display compassion?
My son was born at 11 lb 3 oz— with the birth defect of nerve damage on his right arm… his arm was basically like a limp spaghetti noodle. His sleeve was pinned to his onesy so it wouldn’t be harmed further. I asked what we could do— they said nothing. I asked again— they said “well— manipulate it. So everytime I held him— we did windmills, or cheer— I moved it every direction an arm move. MONTHS later— his fingertips moved, more months— his whole fingers— then wrist, then his hand, elbow. By fourth grade—it still threw his gait off— but he now played cello. By high school— he sat first chair Bass.
So manipulate it— at the very least it’ll keep muscles from atrophy.
I’m a photo realistic watercolor painter… I also have MS. My eyes are also essential to my work. My paintings have hung in the Toledo Museum of Art. Still—occasionally sometimes I have double vision so badly it’s difficult to see where my brush top is. Just exerciize your arm— go to Therapy… find your new normal. It won’t be the same— but passion never stops— it just finds a new route
wonderful story of new beginnings. i
It is certainly hard to live with this impediment. I am proactive: I keep moving my fingers in short time slots. Will do everything to get back to normal. Thanks to you.
DSA
An absolutely brilliant and intelligent solution!!
Don’t you just love those Democrat-controlled cities and states!!
Sue- All but a tiny fringe of Democrats would be as revolted by this kind of violence as any normal Republican. Do not confuse a handful of urban centers with normal Democratic values. Extremism is taking root in both parties. Violence has been an American social pathology for generations. No one is left off the hook. When Republicans support lavish tax cuts for the super rich, they deprive the justice system of the resources they need to hold the mentally unstable and drug-addicted or violent in institutions where they can be treated and kept out of society. That leaves governments no option but to let people run around until something terrible happens. There just isn’t space for them. When Republicans oppose mental health screening before allowing people to buy assault weapons and they oppose raising the age to buy them from 18 to 21, they are sowing the seeds of violence and disaster. Just doing those two things would help a lot. When they support racist “make America hate again” conservatives who defend the police executing minorities on the street for just being there, they create a toxic climate that breeds more violence. There is no lack of violence in areas run by Republicans. Movie studios make fortunes releasing films that glorify violence. Certain types of other pop culture do the same. None of this excuses the criminal, it does however mean society is to blame as well. Republicans who separate families at the border for years and traumatize young children for life, or force rape victims to have the rapist’s baby, or put oil company profits above the survival of the planet, or tell a billion lies to delegitimize elections and subvert democracy, or support a fascist con man who would “suspend the constitution” and thinks he’s above the law, for president, have no moral ground to stand on. And I’m just scratching the surface. And Dante, I truly hope you can find your way back to the life you had somehow.
In 2022, NYC had 433 murders while all of Italy had 319, all of Germany 211, and all the UK 697.
For an even stranger comparison, in 1990 at the height of the crack epidemic, NYC had 2154 murders while in the (first) Iraq War that year 96 American soldiers were killed.
So of course, societal issues have nothing to do with it………
The homicide rate among Europeans is low.
The homicide rate among European-Americans is also low.
Sorry to hear about this hideous assault. Also wanted to point out: Mount Vernon is not in the Bronx, it is a neighboring low-income high crime county in Westchester County (where presumably this took place since it is the Mount Vernon police who responded).
I’ll say it as an American. In the past, we used to lock up all the crazies. Now we have hardly any psychiatric hospitals. You see, people getting assaulted or murdered doesn’t cost this evil government anything. It’s all about the bucks.
And remember, everything is actually fine as long as Bidet gets his daily Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream fix.
Bob it was the Reagan administration that threw these folks onto the streets……
I am so sorry to learn of your severe and devastating hand injury. It was a senseless act, and there is no explanation to help ease your suffering. I join my suffering to yours and to Christ, who will make things right by expanding your other gifts. I suffered severe acoustic trauma from an exploding bike tire 1 year ago. I can use my hands to practice on my cherished Bosendorfer, and it feels good to play, but the sound is horribly distorted. Same goes for my audiophile passion, just before retirement no less. We suffer in different ways, but we can accommodate to our disability. Hopefully you’ll receive the healing you need. Seek music and compose for one hand. Ravel has a beauty for left hand, and so you could do the same for right hand. Complete physical therapy. Enjoy conducting, composing and listening to music! It hurts, but there will be joy and goosebumps in your future.
My deepest sympathies. But the elephant in the room is NYC’s insane woke liberal policies encouraging criminals and letting them off.
This didn’t happen in New York City.
Hi Dante just read about what happened in the Bronx. We are just ecstatic that you are well. We’ll written my friend. We think about you always here in South Africa. All our love Dee and Denzil