Musings From a Morris Chair

I was looking at listening to Jose Marie Blumenschein's graduating recitial, in which he plays Dimitri Shostakovich's Violin Sonata, Opus 134. On the broadcast program, an interview is inserted before he plays the sonata. Blumenschein decribes the three movements and relates them to Shostakovich's life; this sonata was written late in his life. To loosely paraphrase, Blumenschein sees the first movement a response to Shostakovich's hard and anguished life, the second as more upbeat and the third as resignation of the life lived. As Blumenschein played the sonata, I hear the phrases typical of Shostakovich, I begin to think that as hard as his life had been, as an artist in Soviet Russia, in a time where art could be mistaken for wrong political thought; he had made music. The music of genius and surely that at some point it had brought happiness to him or a sense of satisfaction for however the moment was long.

I am sitting while listening staring at the back of my dining room with a little light coming from the kitchen. I don't feel real, the scene is surreal. I am comfortable, but I am in slight pain. It seems that way more, now growing old. I have not lived my life in fear or terror, but I feel that my life has been hard. I have no satisfaction from accomplishment. This is something I have wanted. I have had fleeting moments of happiness that I can't recall the emotion. The roller coaster of emotions from my family, even my son, causes me anxiety. The anxiety causes a void. I am sitting listening, not angry nor am I particularly sad, but I'm tired. Tired of wanting and struggling; wishing that there had been something I had really been good at that gave me a sense of completion, like composing or playing a sonata.