story/clarification/apology

[Jim Morrison <jim_morrison@sprynet.com>]

Imagine:


You're at home, enjoying your time by yourself and you hear the doorbell
ring.  You go to the door and seeing that it's your soulmate, you open it.
She's wearing a sexy dress and tells you that's she isn't wearing any
panties.  She also tells you that she has a nice, though somewhat distant,
neighbor named Glenn Gould who phoned her earlier in the morning to tell her
that he could feel at sometime later that night he absolutely would have to
have his piano wheeled out on the back patio and play some of the Bach
Inventions, Partitas, English Suites and all of the Goldbergs.  He hoped
this wouldn't bother her.  Your soulmate (pantyless, remember) says that she
loves the way he plays and has already spread the blankets out on her back
yard and how would you like to go spend the summer night listening to Gould
and making a lot of love warmed in the shadows cast by the moonlight.

You shut the door and immediately go to your computer and send her an email,
asking her to keep her panties on, never to come to your door unannounced
again, and if that Gould fellow continues to play the piano at night, she
should call the police and file a noise complaint.  You tell her that you're
busy working on your novel, which should be through in a year or two, and
not to disturb you until then.


The point of this somewhat silly allegory being that if you really think
hell is other people, I suspect you either haven't meet the right people,
have meet too many of the wrong people, have failed to recognize her the
right people are, or have let the right people go.

I'm reminded of Italo Calvino's great book "Invisible Cities"  (Another
Bachian literary work) which ends:

He said: It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the
infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles the current
is drawing us."

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if
there is one, it is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that
we form by being together.  There are two ways to escape suffering it.  The
first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that
you no longer see it.  The second is risky and demands constant vigilance
and apprehension: seek and learn who and what, in the midst of the inferno,
are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."



Other notes:

I don't mean to say that people can't make you're life hellish.  They can.
But I also believe that people can make your life heavenly.  Aren't Gould
and Bach people?  And aren't we are necessarily dependent on the existence
of other people (most trivially our parents)?  So why not try to embrace our
connection and make the best of them endure.

And aren't we all people, and if we universal the statement hell is other
people, that is, allow it to be true for others as well as ourselves, don't
we capture ourselves in the set of hell?

What happens if we universalize the statement: heaven is other people?  See
what set that captures us in.

I don't mean to be saying that Gould's life was tragic or sad.  From what I
can tell he was at least somewhat happy, and thought of himself as very
happy.   I'm sorry if I've made it sound otherwise.


I also think scintillating may be the wrong word to describe Parmentier's
Partitas.  That sounds a bit too bright and cheery and smelling of the too
strong coffee of virtuosity to me this morning.  I'm still very new at
describing harpsichord playing so please be patient.

I still think their great, by the way.

I also bought of copy of Richard Troeger's recording of the Partitas on
clavichord, which I haven't been able to listen to yet, but am interested in
hearing how the sound of that much smaller and hammered instrument sounds
compared to the piano and harpsichord.  Anybody have this set?


Bye for now,



Jim


PS:  George Bernard Shaw said hell is full of musical amateurs.  Well, being
a musical amateur myself (guitar) I can tell you that some of the best times
in my life were spent making amateur music with people.

Sartre wrote a play called "No Exit" in which hell literally is being locked
in a room with annoying people.  The line "Hell is other people" occurs in
it.  I'm not sure how truthful Sartre found this statement, though from what
I can tell he wasn't too nice to his long-time lover Simone de Beauvoir.

Imagine being locked in a room with Gould, Bach, Schoenberg, (maybe Mozart)
and yourself and your significant other, if you have one, and your pets and
your children, along with Ghandi, Bertrand Russell and MLK to help keep the
peace.  Doesn't sound so bad, does it?  Can I suggest heavenly?

Maybe hell is being locked in a room with this people with only a
doublebuffstoped Wittmayer to play?