The Soul Inside the CD Player

[Birgitte Jorgensen <bj@kemmunet.net.mt>]

Kate C-R wrote: I'd just like to mention however that I?m not entirely
sure that it is not "relevant"...although at the present I don?t think
Aspergers describes GG, I do from time to time vacillate and consider it
might be a 'possibility',

This is probably not the last word on Aspberger's, but I do think
(without, I hope, being too stridently insistent) it's irrelevant in
this sense: If we suspend disbelief for a just a moment and presume that
Gould was mildly autistic, the issue of its relevance in his work and
life would be for him alone to decide. Suppose he accepted such a
diagnosis... would it have been relevant to his experience of his own
gifts? Would it have made a difference to his sense of self? Would it
have affected his approach to life, music, or other creative projects?
Perhaps most significantly, would he have sought a cure or treatment, if
it were possible?

The answer, at least to the final question, would most assuredly be
negative. In fact, he deliberately avoided intellectualizing his musical
gifts (recall his parable of the centipede) for fear that solving the
paradox of their existence (mysterious and intangible, yet corporeal and
mortal) would dissolve their magic. It is surprising and disturbing that
a psychiatrist who was also a musician would deny the obvious fact that
the source of artistic inspiration can all too easily be confused (even
to the artist) with the set of symptoms that contribute to a diagnosis
of a syndrome or mental illness, as John B. pointed out in his posting
yesterday.

My intention is not to romanticize artistic pain. Gould made no secret
of his idiosyncrasies and his longtime habit of self-medication with
sedatives, which was obviously an attempt to "normalize" his nervous
system in order to achieve an emotional state he felt more comfortable
inhabiting. It?s quite possible that talent and a familiar sense of self
depend upon the "divergent aspects of personality" that the medical
profession frowns upon.

John B. says a "resort to diagnostic labels strikes me as more a
confession of helplessness than an achievement of scientific certainty."
I couldn?t agree more. What saddens me about Ostwald?s speculations is
the desperation in his authoritarian clinical tone when he states that
Gould "couldn?t simply admit himself to be emotionally ill and seek help
from an appropriate professional." That begs the questions I began this
posting with: Was Gould secure within himself and content to live on his
own terms? Was he able, by his own estimation, to lead a meaningful,
productive, and sonorous life? If so, and this certainly appears to have
been the case, then rubber-stamping a "professional?s" assessment of his
private inner world is, to come full circle, irrelevant.

Gould is not the first, and he won?t be the last, artist to be
posthumously victimized in this way, but to put a lighter spin on it, as
Bob M. wrote to me, if Gould (and others, including Warhol, Einstein,
Newton) really were autistic, it actually makes one solemnly wish to be
anointed with this illness. Absurd, of course, but that?s the point.

When all is said and done then, I fall back on what we can know about
him. John B. and David P. are right: I am absolutely convinced that we
can know Gould best (not ONLY, just best) through his work because his
soul abides in the music. We could read a thousand testimonials from
everyone who ever had a brush with his greatness, we can read all his
essays and scripts and letters, listen to every radio spot and watch
every television program and they wouldn't bring us any closer to the
man behind the performances than about 50 minutes spent in his company
listening to??.. well, you fill in the blanks with the CD or music video
of your choice.

This phenomenon requires no further explanation to anyone on this list;
it's self-evident that everything he was at the time he made any given
recording is right there inside the music, his inner voice mingling with
ours, surrendering neither to linear time nor to his own mortality. When
another very perceptive list member (Robert) told me that he feels
Gould?s tranquil, introspective Bach pieces "are a window into the true
depths of the man's soul (and mine)" it corroborated my firm belief that
the key to Gould?s power over us is the reciprocity of the ecstasy he
found in his music: it so generously beckons us to enter his world and
partake of his forms of devotion. What I wouldn?t give to have heard the
music that played ceaselessly in his mind.

I think he gave art his all and that's one of the reasons we are so
moved by him and others who give expression to the human condition in
way that makes us feel less alone in the universe. The acoustic space he
creates is so intimate it almost seems untenable at times. It?s exactly
there at the delicate juncture where music breaks free from its
architectural constraints in a way that even words can?t express, that
he tells us in the most sublime way possible everything we really need
to know about him. This isn't confessional art, it's not baring one?s
soul in the way Jerry Springer's guests expose their private lives on
camera, it's Gould speaking to us from outside time and space, saying:
"Here, touch something of the divine with me."

Birgitte Jorgensen