Many things join us as people. Music is one of them. Since before I could walk Beethoven was my favorite composer. And so, this is my gift to you. And while I have sent this to some of those close to me already, there are nearly 2,000 people that read this blog on a regular basis, and I am very grateful and humbled by this. And so, let this be my gift to you, all of you, as you begin 2013. Be well, be safe, remember to live.
And now, have some
I still do it now. Wake up in the middle of the night, pad quietly through the dark still house and sit silent in the living room or at the kitchen table and just be. No need to turn lights on. No one in the whole wide world knows I’m up. It’s just me in the middle of the night quiet, when every house sound banished by daytime activities can come out to play, the clicking of the wall clocks, the on again off again whirr of the refrigerator and, once in awhile, if I am lucky, the one renegade bird in the night who doesn’t care that it’s dark out and sings anyway.
I did this as a child of course. Get up in the middle of the night and move like a secret shadow through the house, my body tingling with joy, my parents still asleep, those two God like forces deep in slumber. Back then I realized I was stealing time, living moments I think I’m not supposed to have, which of course makes them the most delicious moments of all. Moments when the all of me is present and alive and happy and smiling, I am swooning with unutterable joy.
No doubt stealing time spurred Beethoven into writing the Ode to Joy despite being completely deaf at the time.
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Every writer is different. Some can write with all kinds of ambient noise going on, some need complete silence. Some can write to music, even songs. I can often write to two specific kinds of music – jazz and classical. But I can’t write to any kind of music if it has lyrics. And forget writing if the television is on. If I hear words while writing I get so caught up in the words my ability to focus on my writing, whatever its worth, goes out the window, or down the drain. Take your pick.
There are some writers who can write in any environment. Michael, the person I am closest to in the world and one of the best writers I’ve ever encountered, in person or on the page, can write sitting in the middle ring of a three ring circus while the circus is performing for a standing room only raucous crowd. I don’t know how on earth he does it and frankly I am jealous as hell.
As I write this morning I am listening to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number 4 in G, Op. 58. For me there is no better companion than Beethoven. He is as welcome in my world as oxygen is.
If you’ll allow me a moment to stray from the theme of this piece, Beethoven, along with the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are the four sources of music and song closest to my heart and soul. Believe me, I love a wide range of music, but those four do me just fine. As for Beethoven, I’ve literally been listening to his music since before I could walk. I loved classical music all my life. My parents would tell me, however, that there was always something about Beethoven that seemed to reach the center of me. Still true. The closest to that would be Springsteen followed by a third place tie between the Beatles and Dylan.
Having said all that I have thus far, there are times, many of them, when I need total silence when I write. Times where the place writing takes me to is so, what are the words, delicately focused, that any ambient sound will shatter the sentences in mid-air and they’ll never reach the page.
There is certainly no right or wrong about all this. The task is to get the words on the page. And, as always, there are exceptions to the rule. There is one in my case. I can listen to Springsteen while turning loose specific forms of poetry and prose.
Anyway, time for another cup of coffee and some more Beethoven.
Be well. Take care of yourselves.
Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the day two teenager held me up on a Brooklyn street. One put a gun to my head and fired. He and his accomplice, who was rifling through my pockets when the trigger was pulled, got $63 for their efforts. The bullet is still lodged in the brain and I take great pleasure in feigning disappointment that I do not set off airport alarms (if you were hoping for a humor free essay you might as well stop reading now).
To this day there are occasions when, upon hearing about the shooting, a person will lean forward, their brow furrowed a bit, and say things like, "Did it change you?", or, "Is life different?" or, "Do you understand life in a way you didn’t before?" Honest questions all, but I always get the impression that the asker believes being part of an extraordinary act of violence automatically results in a deeper understanding of life. It doesn’t. At least I don’t think it does.
The experience did give me a new appreciation for the importance of ducking. It certainly increased my awareness of the human capacity for cruelty. And, it has helped me to remember to live, not miss the moment I’m in, and not miss the chance to tell people I love that I love them.
Much has changed in the last 25 years and there is nothing unique in that. Some wonderful things in life have happened as a result of the shooting. I have been given the gift of being able to work with survivors of brain injury, their families and people in the health care field.
The health care field itself exposes you to wonderful people and to people who have a capacity for cruelty that outdoes the cruelty of shooting an innocent person in the head. Health care providers who see and treat people with disabilities as sub-human beings that are on this earth so they can make a profit ought to be jailed. I know one owner of a community-based program who has run clinical meetings for people in the program and doesn’t have one iota of training as a clinician, yet his ego is so distorted and the lack of regulations so prominent, he gets away with it, to the detriment of those receiving services in the program. I know another director of a brain injury program who told the wife of a brain injury survivor, with her husband present, that there needed to be a funeral for her husband because he no longer exists and she and her husband needed to allow this director and his team of sycophants to re-create him. By comparison, the kid who shot me was simply having a bad day.
There is another thing the shooting gave me. An appreciation for having a bucket list, though it wasn’t until the movie came out that I became aware of the term bucket list. I was, however, aware of experiences I wanted and want to have before my time is up. I want to meet Bruce Springsteen and thank him for the role his songs had in helping me stay alive during some dark times. I’d like to visit the Grand Canyon and spend a week or more exploring the canyon itself. I want to stand in a room that Beethoven was in, and in a room Tolstoy was in, and in a room Dickens was in. I’d even like to get married again some day, really share life with a soul mate. I’d like my daughter and I to have a relationship again before time’s up. And, of course, I want to write and write and write. The list goes on.
One other thing, I’d like to thank God with all my heart and soul that I am alive 25 years later to even have a bucket list, and write this essay for you.
On my writing table is a bust of Beethoven, a childhood hero of mine. He once wrote a short piano piece of fury and heartbreak called Fury Over the Lost Penny. It’s not a long piece but there is enough fury and heartbreak in it to last a lifetime. He wrote it after a coin he’d set aside for food fell into his piano and was lost forever. Well, that is how I feel this morning. My PC has crashed, crashed to the point it will not even boot up. I get these warning signs saying more damage will be done if Windows allows it to boot up. Been a long time since I’ve had an overwhelming urge to break any, well, windows.
Being on a fixed income this event is, in a word, a disaster. Worst of all, I’d just begun writing a piece that I fear is lost forever. All my other writing is saved, thankfully, but this piece I fear is lost and I loved it, as I love all the things I write, even when they suck, and most do. I’m writing this feeble piece on what can best be described as a Model T Laptop.
Lousy morning. The good news is I will be sober seven years tomorrow and don’t think I don’t know I’d be handling this a lot differently if I wasn’t sober.
Peter S. Kahrmann - Est. 1953 