MAN OF MUSIC

I don't know anyone like me.   I wish I did, but I don't.  Some come close but fall short of being like me in one particular way.  Actually, it is I who fall short of them in most normal human abilities, but in one particularly aspect I seem to have something that they do not.   I have had it since childhood, since before I could read or write, before, I think, I could even speak words.

All my life I have had a very special relationship with music.

Music has always been extremely special to me.   But more than that, it has had a kind of other worldly sacredness to it.  It has had a mystical quality about it that is difficult to explain.   But I have it, without a doubt, and I have yet to meet anyone who speaks the same about music.   Certainly many are passionate, but it is not simply passion.  It is a connectedness, for want of a better word, a identification and knowledge, I suppose.  Let me try to explain.

Since earliest childhood I have been attracted to, and fascinated by certain kinds of music, but more, much more than that.   The word, "fascination," comes close to defining it, but not really.   I would say that at certain times music and I were one.  It is as if I had composed the piece.   There an element of familiarity with what at the time was completely unknown music, that felt almost as if it were mine.  Like the memory, I suppose that one has of a past life experience.  Almost.   Almost because I could feel the next note or group of notes and when they came, I felt the great, "of course,"  as upon additional hearings the music revealed more and more to me, became more and more part of who I am, and the more I heard the more I wanted to hear.   Great music, in particular the classic works of the great composers were most powerful in this.   But not alone.   Often popular songs could do this, or even accompaniment music to cartoons or films, whether they were great works or not.   Sometimes, a fragment of a phrase of music could become so special (with no connection whatsoever to the film or cartoon it accompanied) that it would lodge itself in my brain.   Not that I would hear it over and over.  No.   But it was there.   It had become part of my anatomy.  As much as a new tooth or a hair.

I did not understand other children or adults who did not have the same reverence for music.  Those of my parents generation, for example, loved their "Big Band" music.   So did I.   But there were certain pieces that were very very special, not just a nice tuneful arrangement of a song.   I remember hearing Harry James', "Sleepy Lagoon."  I thought it was extraordinary.  I still do. It's almost a little tone poem of the classical genre.   Wonderful arrangement, tune, and execution.   But no one among my parents or their friends, or relatives, had the reaction that I had, which was to sit quietly and listen to  it, to study it, to meditate upon it.

Now that I think of it, I must have spent a lot of time in deep meditation, for what is it to meditate but to focus one's mind so completely that one reaches another plane;  to meditate is to focus on something to allow your mind to relax and expand, receive, explore.  I think that's what I was unknowingly doing.  Through and around music.   Very weird.

As I got older the phenomenon continued along with me.   It was always there.   And as I began to really study and understand the great works of composers like Bach and Mozart  I felt all the more keenly and with great meaning.   Brahms could cast a spell over me, as could just about any other composer.

But the one composer whose works were especially profound to my inner spirit was that of Chopin.  Again, from a young age there was Chopin in my life -- he had a spooky familiarity, again, as if I were there when he composed the music, or that I was him.    His music spoke, no, shouted to me.  Once heard it could never be forgotten, indeed, my first reaction was to hear it again.   This piano music you understand, as Chopin wrote little else.    Chopin.   Chopin.   Chopin.  Chopin.   His music transported me to another time and place but not to a specific one, though at times I would associate whatever clues there were on the page of printed sheet music, such as the place of composition, (Paris, 1844) could draw me to that place and time --completely imaginary and probably not accurately, but nonetheless quite real-- to me.

As I got older I discovered another power music had over me.  It could, under the right circumstances cause me to weep.  Not because it accompanied some sad, or moving scene, or because the text was so powerfully moving, but simply the absolute sounds themselves, reached into me, and once at home, they burst into emotional turmoil in the form of tears.   This was something completely out of my control.   I could no sooner not cry than not breathe. Certain works did it all the time and every time.   Others only on occasion.

Still, so many years later, I am subject to sudden bursts of weeping though it seems to happen far less frequently.  But the bond is still there.   I cannot  imagine a life any differently.   What would it have been like without an intimate knowledge and love of great music?   Seems like a kind of hell to me.   Unimaginable.  Yet, I know that most humans experience none of this and lead full and happy lives.   Much happier, in fact, than mine.  

For it is this love of music that has led me down a path that was wrong for me.   And my life is all twisted up and confused because of it.   And I am past the age of starting over.   Well past.   So I am alone, alone with my music.   It is not fulfilling.   It is a tragedy.  

It has been both a gift and a curse.