October 04, 2007

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.

6 comments:

A. said...

Although I'm not musical, I hear echos of what you are saying in my own mind. I've always wished to be good at something.

I do like the National Geographic pictures in your sidebar.

Hathor said...

A.
I not sure how that widget works, on my home computer I get one picture and here at work another.
I liked the picture of the dunes, eventhough it took me awhile to figure out the pink thing. I thouhgt it was a bug at first. You know, I have no idea what you saw.

A. said...

I went off to have a look at the archives on the National Geographic site and forgot to reply. It was the sand dunes I saw, with the pink thing :) Today it is jeweled hands - beautiful. Jeweled and decorated with henna.

Hathor said...

a.
I get only the labels of the pictures at work. I think the network is blocking the site. Thats why I was confused. The time difference didn't help either. I did see the picture you saw, yesterday and before I went to work on my home computer.

I like these sets of pictures, probably will keep for awhile.

Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Something that you'd really been good at...?

You're pretty good at blogging, even if irregular in doing it. And I still think that you'd have something worthwhile to say in an autobiography, given that you lived through interesting times and are a keen observer with a sharp mind.

Jeffery Hodges

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Hathor said...

Sometime I wonder how long my sharp mind will last.
Getting the Nobel prize in Physics was the dream that would have been fulfilling. I know, an extremely high goal, but that's what I wished for at twelve. The same reason I could not focus then is the same now, my mind is so disrupted. The skills I use at work are more intuitive and instinctive, even when it requires thinking.