GG: Friederich on The Idea of North/Interesting Janet Somerville Observation

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

-- Otto Friederich on The Idea of North
I was glancing through the Otto Friederich bio of Glenn Gould. In his
comments on The Idea of North, he says that one of the most important
weaknesses in "The Idea of North" was that "Gould never told us what he
thought about solitude." (Well, gee, take a guess, Otto!) Friederich goes
on to ask, "But how does solitude actually help or harm a man? How does it
liberate him or cripple him?... These would be difficult questions even if
Gould were writing about them in the most straightforward way, but a radio
drama spun out of other people's words was obviously the most ambiguous of
approaches."

Uhm, yeah, but I'm sure that was the whole idea. First, Glenn Gould wasn't
about to write, "I need 25 cc's of solitude per day, and I need it
because... If I have too much solitude (more than 35 cc's per day), then I
feel... " Even assuming he knew the answers, the questions would have been
too personal for him. Second, as I've just suggested, the questions may not
_have_ an answer. The answers not only vary from person to person, they
vary from moment to moment in one person's life. Perhaps the only way to
"answer" them is to raise more questions. Or perhaps the answer is that The
Idea of North _is_ your answer. (Or, to borrow from an infamous American
quotation... It depends on what you meaning of "is" is.) Hmmm. Perhaps I've
been reading too much Thich Nhat Hanh...

Anyway, saying that these "would be difficult questions" is a bit of an
understatement. Sort of like saying, "That chap Bach was rather good at
writing fugues, wasn't he?"

--
According to Otto Friederich, Janet Somerville "astutely observed that
Gould's passions concerned mainly the sounds that he heard inside his own
head."

You mean there's something weird about that? ;-> Seriously now... Couldn't
the same be said about other musicians (performers and composers alike)?
Why else would they become musicians if they _didn't_ have those sounds
inside their head? Glenn Gould was simply more intense than most. But that
"internal life," or whatever you want to call it, was essential to his
life's work. Closely tied in with the need for solitude.

I'm not saying you can't be a great musician if you have a busy life
outside the music. What about Bach, after all?! I couldn't write a postcard
with that many kids running around!

I'm sure philosophers walk about, pondering and re-pondering the meaning of
life. What about poets? My English teacher at college could recite poems
(his own and most anyone else's) by heart. He could dissect stories,
getting right to the heart of them. (In his mind, the heart of the story
was almost always "The narrator was unreliable.") So what if he did the
occasional eccentric thing, such as wearing sandals with white socks? Or
spending the night in the telephone repairman's tent to see what it was
like? At least he was able to create -- and to find out what it was like
inside the telephone repairman's tent). But I'd hesitate before sending him
out with a grocery list!

I'd say that many writers are caught up in that "world inside their head."
In an article on fiction writing, a novelist once said something like,
"When other people hear voices inside their head, they call a psychiatrist.
When we hear voices inside our head, we call it 'creating dialogue.'" When
I read that, I said, "Phew! I'm not the only writer who does that." <grin>

------
Anne M. Marble
amarble@sff.net
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