08 Feb 07

Psychotherapy With Dr O’Malley (9)

I presented Dr. O my homework: some of my favourite quotes and my interpretation of them in the context of my character development and aspirations.

There is no wealth but life John Ruskin

Previously I believed there is no wealth but wealth, and greed is good. Ruskin’s quote demonstrates how shallow my materialism was.

A man can surely do what he wills to do Arthur Schopenhauer

To succeed, I need the willpower. To think, to will, to implement my plans are the necessary steps.

Make haste slowly Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus

I need to take breaks, restore energy, and relax so I don't get mentally unbalanced.

Miss-spending a man’s time is a kind of self-homicide George Saville

Realizing how little I know and how much there is to learn, I must continue to spend time learning.

He who hates vice hates mankind Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus

I am learning to live with my vices, and I am determined not to become their slave.

We cannot learn without pain Aristotle

There are no shortcuts in life without consequences that are often painful. I try to learn from painful situations. The discomfort of exertion now is the price of happiness later.

We will either find a way or make one Hannibal

My goals will remain unrealised without action.

Knowledge alone effects emancipation Shankara

Learning deconditions - it liberates.

Rule your desires lest your desires rule you Publilus Syrus

If I had heeded Publilius Syrus, I wouldn’t be in prison. This quote is important for my future health and happiness.

“An excellent array of quotes,” Dr. O said.
“I had fun doing it,” I said.
“Ruskin is talking about being dedicated to having a healthy life. Last time we met we discussed how being dedicated to help others is a good way to channel energy versus channelling energy into destructive egocentric goals. The third quote implies making rapid movement slowly. Take breaks. When driving down the road take time to avoid wrong turns. You’ve done a good interpretation of Saville’s quote. You show a dedication to effort. The quest for knowledge is good, but don’t forget experience and work have roles to play as well. Again, with Hannibal you show dedication to a way. It’s for you to decide whether it’s a way to Beverley Hills glitz or a way to understanding yourself and your life. Some say ascetics acquire wealth of character. Others, such as the Kashmiri yoga traditions around 700 AD say you do not have to become ascetic to achieve enlightenment. You can be a householder with a job, family, responsibilities, and still be dedicated and achieve enlightenment. Folks do it in different ways. There is no one spiritual path.
Now I’ve got something to tell you: I’m being moved to Rincon Unit, so this will be our last session.”
“Oh no! I thought this was too good to be true. We’re making great progress and now I'll have to start all over again with someone else.”
“Yes. Dr. T will be taking over. She’s a little older than I am, and she’s had plenty of experience.”
“This is the third time this has happened. I feel like I’m building a house and it keeps getting knocked down.”
“But you’re learning to build a stronger house. You’re becoming more skilled with plaster, nails, and floorboards.”
“That’s not the point. Now I’ve got to build rapport all over again. You’ve influenced my life more than any other staff.”
“How so?”
“You’ve enabled me to build a cognitive structure to deal with my anxieties. I laugh things off because of what you’ve taught me. You’ve enabled me to bundle my studies, my yoga, and your wisdom into a solid foundation that will help me deal with whatever life throws my way. You’ve increased my understanding of myself immensely. It seems everything I’ve been working at has come together under your tutelage. I was afraid this would happen - that you would eventually leave.”
“Is there anything you’d like to ask me before we part?”
“What’s the single most important piece of advice you can give me?”
“You need to be willing to accept who you are. Don’t always want to be better, or new and improved. Accept who you are. You contain a lot of good inside you. You’re doing a good job of sorting yourself out. You’re putting tremendous effort into it. Make haste slowly. Don’t let your abundant energy distract you. Don’t destroy yourself. Don’t rush down the path. You’ll do exceptionally well if you don’t get confused, and if you realise what’s going on around you and how it could affect you. Be cognizant of the pluses and minuses – the consequences of your actions. Learn about yourself from your yoga. Over the next year focus on several poses, the alignment, the breathing, the micro adjustments, the fluency of the poses themselves. A foundation will develop, not just muscle on bone, but a strong foundation from which you’ll know yourself better and be able to expand in all directions. From your physical practice you’ll develop a mental foundation. Developing into quite a nice person is the goal.”
“I’ll do my best to put that into practice.”
“Good luck.”
“Good luck to you too.”


To Dr. O, if by chance you read this, and you could spare the time, I would be pleased to receive an email from you at writeinside@hotmail.com with a view to keeping open a line of communication.

Should I continue on with Dr T?


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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

31 Jan 07

Two Tonys Responds to the President’s State of the Union Address

“Didya watch Bush’s speech?” Two Tonys asked.
“I caught some of it at Weird Al’s,” I said. “What did you think of it?”
“What a buncha fuckin’ bullshit. Are the people of the world this fuckin’ gullible? How many times can a guy lie to you? Every fuckin’ year the State of the Union Address is basically, ‘Come on motherfuckers, get down in the front row and listen to my lies.’”
“You’ve read The Great Thoughts. What do you think Schopenhauer would have made of it?”
“The Schop says, ‘Life is fuckin’ short. The truth is fuckin’ long. So for fuck’s sake tell the fuckin’ truth.’ The Schop would have hated the sonovabitch. He wouldn’t have voted for this motherfucker. Would Nietzsche?”
“Nietzsche probably would have called the speech something like, ‘Food for the cabbage brained.’ But aren’t the people who voted for Bush getting what they deserve?”
“Of course they are for allowin’ the motherfucker to do what he does. There’s been times when stompin’ on people like this lead to insurrections. But no one picks up their pitchforks and goes after schleps like Bush anymore. And the replacements are no better. Hillary Clinton – let’s get serious now. John McCain – whatthafuck did he ever do? He was shot down over Nam napalming little Asian kids to death. Whattayou think of Dubya’s speech?”
“It was written for him, spoon-fed to him, and all he had to do was parrot it out. Looking at Bush’s face made me think that his lies are wearing him down.”
“His face is incestuous!” Two Tonys said. “And that doesn’t come from his father’s side. It’s his mother’s side. Look at Barbara - the big old thickheaded squareheaded broad. And that motherfucker Jeb down there in Florida.”
“He lied about the WMD, about Rumsfeld, about Ahmad Chalabi, and now he’s trying to sell the troop surge.”
“Other than for Halliburton and the oil companies and the arms and bomb makers, Iraq is a lost fuckin’ cause. This General Petraeus he’s sendin’ in has a track record for calmin’ things down in Mosul, Kurd country. Just wait till he gets down there with the Shiites. Blood and guts will be flyin’ everywhere. Put some stars and stripes on me, and send me to Mosul, and even I can calm down the motherfucker. Here’s a prediction from an old beat-up lifer in the state pen: the troop surge is gonna fail.”
“It’s twenty to thirty thousand more troops for Halliburton to service though.”
“It don’t take no rocket scientist to figure out that Dick Cheney is influencin’ Bush for the benefit of the Halliburtons of the world. Bush is Cheney’s bitch. Machiavelli and Cheney would have been the all-time best cell partners. There’s reasons for Bush’s lies: they’re benefiting certain people. I’ve lied for my own benefit, like when I was on the witness stand tryin’ to beat a murder beef. Bush’s lies boil down to profits for the contractors who put him in power with their political contributions. That’s payola - it's the American way. To the contractors there’s no difference between Bush and a used-car salesman. Both are tryin’ to sell a product, whether a fucked-up car, or a fucked-up war in Iraq. Both are fuckin’ whores. Now the motherfucker is gettin’ ready to sell a war in Iran. He’s gonna go after those fuckin’ mullahs with Patriot missiles, and farm boys outta Iowa who don’t know any better, slayin’ Iranian kids – collateral damage – with depleted-uranium rounds fired from Black Hawk helicopters. It’s gonna be somethin’, man, I’m tellin’ ya. He’s gonna rock those mullah’s world.”

But life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
Arthur Schopenhaur – The World as Will and Idea (1819)

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

Flashback to Yard 4

T-Bone V Monkey

“You’ve been in so many fights,” I said to T-Bone, “you must have had your arse kicked some time. Can we talk about that?”
“Alright. In ’98 at Rynning Unit, I was workin’ as a field marshal for the Mau Maus, given responsibility to handle certain things among the blacks: Crips, Bloods, AAC, Muslims, Christians. And I was supposed to keep an even keel among 'em all.”
“Who’s above field marshal in the Mau Maus?”
“A general. A guy who has rank of status, who’s done a lotta kills. I made a mistake: I let a black guy get away without payin’ a $500 heroin debt. I shoulda whipped his tail but like a dummy I felt sorry for him. I thought I was home free, but word went around all the yards.
You know, it takes ten men to control an eighty-pound chimpanzee. Next thing is I’m getting visited by Monkey. He’s five-six. About 150 pounds. He’s an expert in a West African style of fightin’ where they study animals such as the monkey. He says, ‘Hey wassup, bro!’ And shook my hand. I thought we were cool. He says, ‘I heard you had a rough time with the white boys and the po-lice at the other yard. Everybody sends you their L 'n' Rs. But check this out: when we get to the pod, I need to talk to you. I’ve got somethin’ for you.’ I asked him, ‘Are you livin’ in my pod?’ and he says, ‘No. But I’ll get over there though.’ I had an uneasy feelin’, but I didn’t listen to my instincts. I was a massive and lean 295 pounds. I was grabbin’ humongous water bags and drivin’ ‘em. I thought I was invincible to a certain degree. Monkey comes over with two bags of store when we’re all – 100 of us – comin’ back from rec. The cops let him in my pod – even they wouldn’t mess with him 'cause of his reputation. We’re walkin’ together and all of a sudden he drops his store goods, and goes for my throat, but hits me in the sternum – bop! The pain’s instantaneous. Lastin’. It stayed there, draggin’ naggin’ – argghh.” T-Bone's face contorted. "Somethin’ like that.” He punched me.
“Ow! Thanks for the dead leg,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted you to know how it felt.”
“It’s alright. Your stories wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t get socked every now and then.”
“Everything happened so fast. While I recoiled, Monkey dropped down like an ape. He karate punched me right into the femur. Right here. It numbed my whole leg. It took every bit of mind control from trainin’ in football, the Marine Corps, street and prison life to get my mind back – grhhhh -"
Oh no, I thought. Here we go again. I’m in trouble.
“ – to control the pain. Monkey rolled on the ground like an ape, and kicked me straight in the face. My mouth an’ nose were bleedin’. I fell down. Everythin’s cloudy and blurry. I’m dazed. He kicked me in the right shoulder, which woke me up. I did a forward roll, came up, grabbed him, and was gonna rip him apart. But he was just like a chimp – strong and wiry – and I couldn’t hold him. He tried to bite my arm. I bolo punched him in the back of his head but his cornrows cushioned my good six-inch punch – bam!” T-Bone punched my left arm.
"Ow,"I said. "Now my whole left side is injured. Whatever you do, don't punch my right arm or else I won't be able to write."
“I’d focussed all my energy into that one punch. It had took so many people down before. He elbowed me and did a back spin with his left hand across the bridge of my nose. I remember my eyes waterin’, and the next thing I woke up in the infirmary. People said he was bangin’ my head on the ce-ment floor. The brothers held him down until the cops pepper-sprayed the place down. Then Monkey took me outside, outta harms way. I was shamed for a long time. It took me two years to recover mentally from the ass-whippin’. I had to whup a lotta tail to get my prestige back of bein’ number-one hog. He whupped me in 25, 30 seconds. It was a terrifyin’ experience, and I learned how others felt when I terrified them. Monkey was one of the baddest dudes I ever met in my life. Size doesn’t matter. It’s combat readiness, skill and ability to damage a person. He had it deep in his heart. I still have nightmares about Monkey."


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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

Jon answers readers questions

Schubert’s Polyphony and Non-accidental Accidentals: Peaceful Resistance & Portato

T  o be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history, not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. And if we do act—in however small a way—we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of ‘presents’, and to live now—as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us—is itself a marvelous victory.”

  —  Howard Zinn, The Optimism of Uncertainty, The Nation, 02-SEP-2004

CMT: Look at this! The fourth movement of Schubert’s Sonata No. 21 in B-flat. This polyphonic pattern has the fixed position distributed to a double-note and the playing voice distributed to the other three fingers as a melodic figure. It transforms into a delicate and ethereal texture.

DSM: And look back in the first movement. Schubert’s Romanticism here is a harmonic proposition: the entire theme is played out over a dominant prolongation. And his Romanticism is also a motivic proposition: the portato notes (portato, notes against resistance, caressing notes) headed always for the dissonance/resolution. The portato is played by sounding the note for about half of the note's duration; the other half of the duration is to be treated as a rest. A portato is notated by placing a slur above the desired notes which themselves are written with "staccato" markings. The musical heaves and sighs (the crescendos and descrescendos) contribute to this . . .


CMT: The ongoing crescendo meets an “accident” of a portato. And, in place of B-flat major diatonic tones, we get the “accidental” E-natural in bar 11 and 37 (bars 136 and 162 on the repeat). Except that the “mistake” is really beautiful. It’s no kind of accident at all, in the normal sense. It’s a wayward deviation from the sunny path. Comical almost, in the way that an infant can be comical. It’s not a self-conscious E-natural against the F. The E-natural is just straying from the trail a little bit. It doesn’t threaten; it doesn’t demand attention. It’s just a sweet little E-natural on a leash.

DSM: Let’s rip an MP3 sample of it and edit the MP3 sample in MPtrimPRO. MPtrimPRO has a feature that lets you easily and accurately set the ‘begin’ and ‘end’ frame for creating your MP3 clip by using the position of the piece in WinAmp. You pause WinAmp where you want to set the ‘beginning’ of your clip, and then you go to MPtrimPRO (the ‘How much do you want to trim?’ form) and click on the ‘W’ in the ‘begin’ part of the form. Then you fast-forward in WinAmp to where you want to set the ‘end’ of your clip, and go to MPtrimPRO and click on the other ‘W’ in the ‘end’ part of the form. If you want to check to make sure that you set the frame the way you want it, just click on the play-arrow in the MPtrimPRO form and listen to the frame, delimited according to the settings you just created. If you need to adjust the settings you can do it from MPtrimPRO directly (using the time form controls) or from WinAmp. It’s possible to make nice MP3 illustrations for teaching or other purposes pretty easily in this way, taking advantage of the interoperability between MPtrimPRO and WinAmp. Here’s a clip of the bars we were just talking about:



CMT: We also see in this first Molto Moderato movement of D960 an example of how Schubert handles recapitulations. The recapitulation of the phrase you just cited occurs in bar 352.

DSM: And there are more chromatic “accidents,” too. The B-sharp in the left hand in bar 253. The dark, passing intrusion is like a musical interjection. Within a predominantly sunny B-flat major work, it’s a reference to a dissonant inflection from some other narrative, some other piece of music. This is late in Schubert’s life. The B-sharp accidental is a tiny commentary on how Life goes—dissonances, mess and all!




CMT: But bar 11 and bar 253 are “benign” compared to the “accident” in bar 464! The crescendo-decrescendo on the G that looks like a resolution of the F-sharp just dissolves. The resolution dissolves. It lets us know how tenuous and fleeting any security we may have can be! The F-sharp is no ordinary “accidental”. It is an emblem of the uncertainty of the human condition. Yes, it passes. But its effect is corrosive!




DSM: And, in the second movement—in the Andante Sostenuto—look at the B-sharp in bar 32:




and its restatement in bar 121:




CMT: The F-doublesharp in the left hand in bar 121 lends a bit of solace to it. The effect is like a kindly grandparent telling us that things will be alright! Doesn’t it seem that way to you?

DSM: Yes. But it depends on your fingering, I think. The Nineteenth Century fingering systems—Kullak’s The Aesthetics of Pianoforte Playing, Liszt’s Technical Exercises for Pianoforte, Pischna’s Technical Studies, Czerny’s, and Dohnanyi’s Essential Finger Exercises—are now supplemented by Tansescu’s treatise, which is recently translated. Dragos Tanasescu applies mathematical permutation formulas to technical patterns of keyboard performance, to devise polyrhythmic patterns to be practiced between voices in polyphonic exercises and new transposition alternatives. The permutations each have a somewhat different color.

CMT: While Tansescu’s intent was predominantly a pedagogical one, the effect of examining the many permutations is to (re-)discover the many nuances of views and attitudes that different fingerings can lend to a passage.

DSM: Charles Fisk explains how Schubert’s views and attitudes toward his own life may well have shaped his music in the years shortly before his death. Fisk’s book on Schubert is based on evidence from the composer’s original correspondence, his song texts and his written letters, and from his vocal and instrumental compositions. Noting extraordinary aspects of tonality, structure, and gestural content, Fisk argues that Schubert was trying to relieve his sense of exile. He was also, according to Fisk, trying to cope with his sense of mortality—his anticipation of an imminent death from syphilis. Fisk performs careful analyses of the structure and correspondences in the Schubert works that he explores. He identifies in them some detailed musical narratives that relate to the themes of mortality, alienation, hope, and desire. Schubert’s views of these likely informed his composing.

CMT: Besides that, it’s important to consider the political situation in Vienna late in Schubert’s life. Vienna was not a sweet sylvan place of gardens and waltzes at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. The peacetime was filled with repression and censorship, and Vienna was a city where the safest thing was to stay inside. There was an aura of fear, as we see in Erikson’s book. Unlike his Beethoven, who moved in higher social circles and was relatively immune to political pressure, Schubert occupied a middle-class station in life and had to be careful. But music was maybe the safest of the arts, because, given its abstractness, it was impossible to prove that a composer was expressing subversive political ideas in a particular piece. Vienna essentially became a police-state during Schubert’s adulthood. Schubert’s posture as a musician is, in some ways, not unlike that of Howard Zinn as a historian . . . Schubert’s accidentals are intimations of moral intercession; acknowledgments of principled resistance . . .

DSM: Several Schubert biographies make some note of Schubert’s self-destructive behavior and his ambivalent sexuality, as well as his growing isolation and anxiety in his long final illness. These factors all contribute to D960, the Sonata No. 21 in B-flat that he wrote just a few months before his death in 1828. The subdued, yearning inwardness is other-worldly in spots. The opening theme is grand and resigned. But the rumbling trill in the left hand disrupts the serenity. You can feel Death hovering nearby. The slow movement, with its turbulent middle section, seems like a fare-thee-well gesture. Buchbinder’s varied touch and color are perfectly suited to this Sonata. His phrasing is clear but fluid, like that of a consummate storyteller. He makes the fingering complexities in this piece appear effortless.


CMT: Well, maybe not effortless—but more like the blazing ember of a young person dying of cancer. There is an energy that Buchbinder draws upon that animates this piece in a manner that suggests Schubert himself in his last months or weeks. Very convincing. It is as though Schubert knows what is coming, knows the bad end that will soon befall him, but finds the energy to defy it—to stave it off for awhile. Buchbinder’s interpretive liberties feel just right, and his expressiveness is deeply felt.

DSM: He takes some liberties, true, but they are never sentimental ones. His rendering of the first movement of D960 is flowing and has a certain puissance but at the same time manages to be serene, dreamlike, somehow above-the-world.


CMT: The second movement is slow but cohesive. ‘Collected’ if you are a horse person. The scherzo is lightning fast, but it remains light and crisp; it is virtuosic without drawing attention to its virtuosity. In Buchbinder’s hands, the finale is also nimble but never rushed. His performance was superb throughout, but the Schubert is what really brought the audience to its feet!

DSM: The challenges of Schubert’s music to interpreters are many, both technically and emotionally. Schubert once exclaimed, “Das Zeug soll der Teufel spielen!” (‘Such stuff the Devil should play!’) when converging on the finale of the Wanderer Fantasy. The D960 has something of that in it.

• Rudolf Buchbinder website
  
• Andsnes L. Schubert Piano Sonata in B-Flat, D960. EMI, 2005.
  
• Badura-Skoda P. Schubert Piano Sonatas. (Arcana, 1999.)
  
• Baker R. Schubert. Little Brown, 1997.
  
• Barenboim D. Schubert: Greatest Love & Greatest Sorrow. (BBC, 2005.)
  
• Black L. Franz Schubert: Music and Belief. Boydell, 2005.
  
• Brendel A. Schubert Sonatas. (Philips, 2006.)
  
• Brendel A. Schubert: Final Three Sonatas. (Philips, 2006.)
  
• Brendel A. Schubert: The Last Three Piano Sonatas. (Philips, 1994.)
  
• Demus J. Schubert Piano Sonatas. (RCA, 2000.)
  
• Erickson R, ed. Schubert's Vienna. Yale Univ, 1997.
  
• Fisk C. Returning Cycles: Contexts for the Interpretation of Schubert's Impromptus and Last Sonatas. Univ California, 2001.
  
• Gibbs C, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Schubert. Cambridge Univ, 1997.
  
• Gibbs C. The Life of Schubert. Cambridge Univ, 2000.
  
• Hartling P. Schubert: Twelve Moments Musicaux and a Novel. Holmes & Meier, 1995.
  
• Hatten R. Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Indiana Univ, 2004.
  
• Kazkevich M. Franz Schubert Piano Sonatas. (Conifer, 1995.)
  
• Kempff W. Schubert: The Piano Sonatas. (Deutsch Grammophon, 2000.)
  
• Kramer L. Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, Song. Cambridge Univ, 2000.
  
• McKay E. Franz Schubert: A Biography. Oxford Univ, 1996.
  
• Messing S. Schubert in the European Imagination. Univ Rochester, 2007.
  
• Montgomery D. Franz Schubert's Music in Performance: Compositional Ideals, Notational Intent, Historical Realities, Pedagogical Foundations. Pendragon, 2003.
  
• Neumayr A. Music and Medicine: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Medi-Ed, 1994.
  
• Newbould B. Schubert the Progressive: History, Performance Practice, Analysis. Ashgate, 2003.
  
• Newbould B. Schubert: The Music and the Man. Univ California, 1997.
  
• Perahia M. Schubert Piano Sonatas. (Sony, 2003.)
  
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• Sloboda J. Determinants of fingering choice in piano sight-reading. J Exp Psychol: Hum Percep & Perf 1998; 24:1-19.
  
• Uchida M. Schubert Piano Sonatas. (Philips, 1998.)
  
• Zinn H. A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. CityLights, 2007.
  
• Zinn H. The Politics of History. Univ Illinois, 1990.
  
• Zinn H. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. (FirstRun, 2004.)
  
• Zinn H. The Optimism of Uncertainty, The Nation, 02-SEP-2004
  
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• mpTrimPRO
  
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• Creating MP3s

18 Jan 07

Midnight Resigns to Die

“So how did you end up in hospital?” I asked
“I just finished takin’ a piss,” Midnight said, “and my left leg went completely dead. I fell against the counter and cut my eye. They did an MRI and said my sciatic nerve is bein’ pinched. Then they sent me to House 9 for two days, and I demanded to leave there. They brought me back to here, but a captain and a sergeant got me and said, ‘We were told your life is in danger on Yard 1. How much money do you owe for drugs?’ I told 'em, 'I don’t owe nothin’ for drugs. I just owe two Honey Buns.’ They wanted to send me to lockdown, but I told 'em I wasn’t in any danger, so they had me sign a waiver sayin’ DOC isn’t responsible if I get hurt.”
“So have you been checking your stool for blood?”
“Yeah. It’s full of blood every day. I’m seein’ clots on the toilet paper now.”
“Did you tell Medical?”
“Yeah. They told me to put in a HNR. I ain’t doin’ that so they can charge me three dollars. Fuck 'em.”
“But it’s your life on the line.”
“I don’t care. I’m forty-two-years old. I’ve lived a good life. I’ll be outta here if I die, and I’ll never have to worry about comin’ back. I believe there’s another life out there as well as this one. As long as I don’t wake up in hell, I’ll be OK.”
“If you keep passing blood, you need to see someone.”
“I thought the blood was a one-time thing, but it’s been every day. The guy who told me to put a HNR in told me to get some gloves, put it in a plastic bag, be discreet, and bring it to Medical to be analysed. But I’m not doin’ that - it’s undignified carryin’ your fuckin’ crap across the yard. It goes in the toilet, and gets flushed. Who the hell wants to dig out their shit? I don't. Drop one, flush one. They’re crazy.”
“I understand your reluctance, but the longer you ride out the big C, the less chance of staying alive you have.”
“I don’t care enough to even talk to them about the cancer no more. They gimme stomach pills, I take 'em. They just want to charge, charge, charge me to go up there, and I work hard for my twenty cents an hour, so fuck 'em.”

Email comments to writeinside@hotmail.com or post them below

Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

Jon answers readers questions

Buchbinder’s Waldstein: Realtime Mourning, Anticipating the Fact

M usic’s promise of happiness for the adult can only be a broken promise.”
  —  Daniel Chua, Musical Quarterly, 2004, Vol. 87, p. 529

DSM: Buchbinder’s recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major Op. 53 are wonderful! He will perform in Kansas City on Saturday evening. Very emotive. Very meditative and introspective, desolate, aching. He hints at loss, the impact of loss or the death of a friend or loved one. Clearly, this Sonata alludes to some Other who is not here [anymore].

CMT: This is what Adorno thought, too—in his unfinished writings about Beethoven’s works. Maybe there is disagreement among Beethoven scholars about this. But your sense of the Waldstein Sonata is at least validated by Adorno and a number of others.

DSM: Adorno once said that, as a child, he had thought ‘Waldstein’ meant literally that Beethoven was writing an emotional caricature of a pensive scene involving a dark path through rocks in the woods. When he saw the score as a young kid, he imagined a person like Schumann’s Knight of the Hobbyhorse, ‘Ritter von Steckenpferd.’

I  imagined a knight entering a dark, rocky wood.”
  —  Theodor Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, 1998, p. 4

And later he confesses:

W  as I not closer to the Truth in this then, than ever I was later when I could play the Waldstein by heart?”
  —  Theodor Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, 1998, p. 4

CMT: The childlike mistake he made in identifying the music transformed a naïve experience into an enduring metaphysical one that stuck with him his whole life. The ‘child’ in us is—for Beethoven, for Adorno, for Derrida, for Buchbinder, for you and me—a perennial fount of transcendence. The gestalt of innocence is a perennial source of Truth.

DSM: Chua makes a point in his 2004 article addressing, among other things, Sonatas Nos. 26 and 32—that music must say ‘I was happy’ before it can invoke loss. Adorno had a similar remark about the arietta of Beethoven’s last sonata: “Utopia is heard as what as already been.” Derrida said more or less the same, too. To say ‘I was happy’ is to say ‘It is too late’. It is to mourn all that’s never been fulfilled, all that’s been taken away by death or disease or disability or loss—all that, now, can never be.

CMT: How should we mourn for Derrida, who spent thirty years meditating on the hazards of mourning, all the while insisting that true mourning is, paradoxically, inevitable and not really possible?

DSM: Well, try mourning defiantly, like Dylan Thomas, refusing to go gentle into that Good Night. Acknowledging the human condition doesn’t necessarily entail acquiescing, you know!

D o not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.


G ood men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


W ild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.


B rave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


A nd you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

CMT: Holly Prigerson and Paul Maciejewski are a husband-wife team who are studying grief and response to loss. Prigerson is faculty at Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Maciejewski is a faculty member at Yale. They’re re-examining the common clinical conception of grief: that when people mourn, they go through Kübler-Ross’s famous stages. When they began their work they say they were amazed to find that the “stages of grief” theory has been accepted by the medical establishment for 40 years, but it has not been studied or validated, and Kübler-Ross’s seminal writings on it were not based in any detailed research. Kübler-Ross’s ideas had—and have—face-validity. But they were basically only conjectures at the time they were proposed. Also surprising was Prigerson’s and Maciejewski’s discovery that the main emotional component of grieving wasn’t sadness or anger, as previously thought. Yearning, Maciejewski says, is the dominant characteristic after a loss—more prominent than sadness.

G rief is really about yearning and not about sadness.”
  —  Holly Prigerson, 2007

DSM: And it doesn’t begin with the moment when the loss materializes. In fact, the act of mourning, Derrida says, begins as soon as friendship begins, for “one of the two of you will inevitably see the other one die.” So the work of mourning is also a memorial act—for the other is alive in us, even after death. Characteristically, Derrida dwells on the bond between name and memory—hearers remember a person when we speak his or her name, and thus we keep our friends alive. Grapple with life’s mystery! This is what Beethoven—and Buchbinder!—are doing in the Waldstein sonata! It is what Adorno understood, even as a small child!

CMT: Regret is often coupled with grief, you know. That’s something that Janet Landman at University of Michigan has written about. She notes that we tend to view regret as an emotional indulgence. Yet, regret—over mistakes, missed opportunities, failure or misfortunes, the finiteness of human time and possibility—is a constructive response when it spurs us to pragmatic action or engagement with the world, she maintains. Landman uses the prism of novels, poems, psychological theory and anthropology to focus and refract her arguments. Landman examines four classic novels—Dickens’s ‘Great Expectations,’ Dostoevsky’s ‘Notes from Underground,’ Henry James’s ‘The Ambassadors’ and Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs. Dalloway.’ These represent for Landman four distinct worldviews: romantic, tragic, comic and ironic worldviews, respectively. She shows that how we experience regret depends on our outlook and cultural values. She doesn’t illustrate her points with Beethoven or other composers, but the literary parallels to what we’re talking about are clear enough.

DSM: And the worldviews that frame instances of regret or grieving don’t have to be pure. They’re not mutually exclusive. For example, Landman examines Anne Tyler’s ‘Breathing Lessons’—a composite of romantic and ironic worldviews. And it seems to me (and maybe to Daniel Chua) that Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata may be a composite of romantic, ironic, and tragic all at once.

CMT: Landman characterizes regret as ‘a more or less painful cognitive and emotive state of feeling sorry for misfortunes, limitations, losses, transgressions, shortcomings, or mistakes.’ ‘Cognitive-and-emotive’ is a novel conjunction seldom drawn so explicitly by other psychologists and psychiatrists as Landman elects to do. Landman views regret as a species of ‘felt-reason’ or ‘reasoned-emotion.’ In addition, Landman draws on empirical surveys, philosophy, chaos theory, anthropology, economics, psychology, and even poetry, for she sees regret as a complex, multilayered experience. Among the questions explored are: What sort of experience is regret? Who is most likely to feel it? What causes regret? What role does it play? How is it transformed? Landman’s elucidation of regret includes mathematical decision-making theoretics.

DSM: Landman seems to strongly favor or commend a composite ‘romantic-ironic’ view that acknowledges regret’s force; that recognizes the inevitability of conflict, loss, limits, and mistakes; and that accepts Life’s irreducible contradictions and ambiguities. It seems that Adorno had inclinations in this way as well. And maybe Rudolf Buchbinder? He surely plays as if it might be so . . .

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T  he C-sharp in Beethoven's Fare-Thee-Well motif near the end of Sonata 32, op. 111 is the most moving, consolatory, pathetically reconciling thing in the world. More so than Sonata 26, op. 81. It is like having one’s hair or cheek stroked, lovingly, understandingly, like a deep and silent farewell look. It blesses the object, the frightfully harried formulation, with overpowering humanity. It lies in parting so gently on the hearer’s heart in eternal farewell that the eyes run over.”
  —  Thomas Mann, ‘Doctor Faustus’