On Bernstein
Originally posted September 9, 2003:
i have been listening to the same track of Bernstein's on the town for over two hours. the pas de deux ballet sequence that immediately follows "lonely town." anybody know that song? it is one of the most haunting songs ever, and so is the instrumental section that follows it. i generally wind up listening to this track over and over again whenever i come to the music library. for years, in fact, i have been listening to this one track over and over again.
the particular part of this musical that i am listening to on loop makes me unfailingly teary. it is so heartrenderingly beautiful. i feel as if, if you close your eyes and just latch onto the music, you can almost grasp something so beautiful your mind can't comprehend it--so much beauty, in a song about loneliness and need and isolated yearning. so much beauty, and if only i had the ability, i would manage to wrap up all that beauty, that i am listening to right now, and encapsulate it somehow with just the perfect words, and share it with all of you. or at least make you all listen and listen over and over again to the music until you understood, as much as you can, all about that beauty and that sadness and that loneliness. until you could grasp how perfect it is, how desolate and perfect and glorious. how, even as you're lamenting something you lost, or someone you loved, how close you are to every other person who has wept sincerely and honestly for something they loved; how close you are to every other person who ever listened to this same music, and closed their eyes because it was almost too beautiful to bear; how close you are to the purest essence of the soul, whatever that is--that essence that brings us to tears when we think about and experience the sublime: about music, or love, or art.
I was reading this quote from Bernstein earlier, while listening to this music. "Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel."
The thing about Bernstein that I think is so perfect in terms of his artistry is that he *embodies* the qualities he writes about. His music embodies them. There is so much compressed stillness, so much energy behind the force of the lonely harrowing melody of this music--an energy, as if the composer were trying to not only wear his heart on his sleeve but yank it out and feed it to every one of us. I feel that way about all of his best music--that he is on the level of Beethoven in terms of his unbridled and unashamed passion for his music. This, the man for whom the NY Phil had to erect a barrier onstage because they were afraid that Bernstein would one day leap so high off the podium when he conducted that he would fall into the pit.
God, what would that be like? To leap so high you fall into the pit? To have that much passion, and to be able to unleash it, and in so doing take a whole orchestra with you where you are, to that place in the stratosphere where your whole being is centered around your music, your art, your passion? The only thing better to me than being able to have a passion like that, to feel that deeply, is to be able to share that feeling with other people who are there with you, who feel it too. This is why I would ten times rather sing in a choir than sing a solo--and i would give up solo singing forever if i could just sing in one really good choir of people who are as dedicated to the art of choral singing as I am--who understand that the concept of "harmony" is as much spiritual as it is physical, that it's about harmonizing your minds as much as it is your tambres.
If only I could find a way to communicate as much as Bernstein did in his music. I'm not asking to be blessed with genius, as were Bernstein and Beethoven. But they, at least, were able to embody every ideal they had, every feeling and component that made them who they were, in music. In something that was so unmistakeably brilliant and beautiful that it would be impossible for anyone hearing it to misunderstand it. How could you misunderstand who Beethoven was after hearing the Eroica, or the 7th, or the 9th? It's all there. He poured his heart out to us, and it meant something.
It seems to me that the more I pour my heart out to people, the farther away I get from my goal; the more I wear my heart on my sleeve, the less I am understood, and the less I am able to articulate what I desperately wish to communicate.
I am not sure what I want to communicate precisely--if I could communicate it I wouldn't be writing this. but it is something good.
what if i never find a way to put it out there? or worse yet, what if i manage to--manage to finally jump off the podium, only to find that there's no orchestra to come with me? that nobody cares? is a vision worthwhile if you keep it to yourself? is a dream really experienced if you live it but nobody shares it with you? are things known only to you really important if nobody else ever is able to understand them?
the entire theme of my life is connection. i want people to understand me. i want to create something so beautiful that nobody will ever be able to take me for something i am not ever ever again. i want to do something that will make people say "wow--this is what she is about" and believe that i am what i say i am, because i've somehow found a way to embody that in my words, in my music, in *something,* i don't care what it is.
but what if i never do? what will any of it mean? will it matter, ultimately, if I have knowledge of myself, if I was never able to fully share that self with anyone else?
i think if i can just get something right in these fics i am always trying to write, i will have come close. if, if, if.
this music is so beautiful.