What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9
Distraught would be the word I would use to describe my mood at the moment. I blog because it relaxes me and right now I need to be relaxed. Let’s just say there is a family emergency, medical in nature, unwanted and unreal. Oh, it is all too real but unreal in the sense that I cannot process it. “I do not understand it, not at all,” as Eric said to Jordan after meeting with Itandehui in my novel Behind The Locked Door. Read it and maybe you will understand. As an old friend (Paul Sutterly) once told me: “Ain’t life a kick in the ass.” Paul’s long gone but life is still kicking me in the ass and this is the biggest kick I’ve ever received. Enough.
Music helps. I imagine everyone turns to something at a time like this–song, poetry, whatever works for them. As good old G.K. Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.'” I think he meant it in a bad way, like cults, conspiracy theories and other forms of what Orwell in Animal Farm called groupthink. But, there are good things to turn to when “no trick (like religion) dispels” as Philip Larkin so aptly put it in Aubade. And for me, one of those is music.
And … poetry. “What’s past is prologue” is a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The beauty of Shakespeare is that his words often have a double meaning. A cynic’s view would be that the past dooms us to an inevitable future. Oscar Wilde coined the popular phrase: “A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Diogenes and Alexander, for example. But, there is another way of looking at Shakespeare’s famous line about past and prologue. That is, the past sets us up for something even better in the future. And yes, that’s what I’m hoping for in this case. What that might be, I cannot imagine but here’s to a new morning.
(Bob Dylan song but not by Dylan since his album version is not on youtube)
Amen, my brother. Spoken from the heart. Godspeed to you and yours, King David.
I always enjoy reading your posts.
I think you might like this. It is life in a nut’s-hell as my sister says.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1an3wTr2hE
and a different version,
cello with cello
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM9bFD8pq28&list=RDMM&index=2
The cello version was amazing and yes cathartic. Thanks again.
Thank you so much. Been a long time. Hope you are doing well.
Try Arkaïtz Chambonnet playing Les barricades mystérieuses, by François Couperin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nGSSoZ09A4
Thanks very much. I will definitely listen. I do appreciate you Gordon.
It’s just three minutes of solo guitar. But you might want to hit Replay.
I listened and enjoyed it. I did a little googling and read a bit about Les barricades mystérieuses. Interesting how the music impacts the mind.
This third movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 132 is known for healing power. It’s titled “Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity.”
This performance by the Alexander String Quartet shows the visually animated score.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNJ6eYL4WMA