GG: Hearty Slap/GG's Psychology

["Anne M. Marble" <amarble@abs.net>]

>But then I read a story
> (was it maybe on this list?) about a conductor accidentally
*stepping* on
> GG hands and GG not seeming to care at all.  So that makes me think
that
> maybe he just didn't like the Steinway guy, or didn't like people
> purposely touching him, or something.

I also remember reading something -- in the Selected Letters, I
think -- where a porter on a train accidentally slammed GG's fingers
in the door! OUCH. I have relatively normal-sized hands (despite
untold years of knuckle cracking!), and that idea still makes me
flinch. Imagine that happening to GG... Shudder.

Like you said, maybe he just didn't like the Steinway guy. (From one
of the accounts I read, the Steinway was getting rather tetchy about
the changes GG was demanding on the piano.)

Maybe his differing reactions to different events had something to do
with his relationship with that particular person. Or with the
circumstances under which they occurred. I'm sure a psychologist could
address the issue of why some people so dread being touched. Quite
often, it's a sign of deeper psychological damage, usually from
childhood -- although I think some people are born that way, too.

Uh-oh! Hope I don't start a heated thread full of speculation about
GG's childhood and DNA. Interesting topics, to be sure, but hard to
prove any theories at this point. (The mention in the Ostwald book of
Glenn Gould as a child sharing his bed with his mother while his
father slept elsewhere was creepy enough for me.)

> Sorry about these unproductive musings.  From now on, I'll leave
things to
> the professionals.

Hey, they're just as confused as we are.

Anyway, I have to go off and check on my hotel reservations again
because I just canceled my credit card because I didn't like the way
the company was treating me after all those years, and so I got a new
credit card and canceled the old one and then realized, naturally,
that my credit card reservations were made on the canceled account.

Phew! I didn't realize how long that sentence was going to be until I
was in the middle of it. With a little tweaking of the vocabulary, and
a couple more dependent clauses, that could be made into an ersatz
Glenn Gould quote.