A Touch of PTSD

If you live long enough, stuff happens to you.  For me, most recently, it's been the breast cancer diagnosis and surgery of my daughter A.  The great good news is that her lymph nodes are clear.  I had never thought very much about lymph nodes before, but now I think about A.'s all the time, and send them messages of gratitude and encouragement.

These have, needless to say, been trying weeks.  Never had Francis Bacon's saying, "he that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune" struck so close to home.  Happily, my particular hostage is doing very well. I, on the other hand, surprised myself after the good news about the lymph nodes by going into a sort of decline.

Before the surgery, I spent days of panic in which I only assumed the worst.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't talk myself into imagining a less-than-dire scenario.  All attempts at rationality failed, reducing me to a trembling, gnarly tangle of dread.  The only explanation I can think of is that I was acting out of a deep well of primitive superstition, believing that if I allowed myself to picture a happy outcome, I would instantly jinx its chances of happening.

My strategy apparently worked, and when we got the good news I felt that Atlas himself had removed the weight of the planet which had crashed down on me the day of A.'s initial diagnosis.  I also expected that I would immediately begin to feel much better.  Instead, on subsequent days my dark emotional state persisted, as if my body--and the feeling did, in fact, seem largely physical--had grown so accustomed to being in alarm mode that now it couldn't shift out of it.  I felt raw, exhausted, yet unable to rest.  I finally concluded that I was experiencing a minor case of PTSD, and that I would just have to wait it out.

I'm happy to say that the dread is subsiding.  The other day I was driving through Vermont's annual foliage extravaganza, with a Bach piano partita playing on the radio.  The assault of so much beauty on eyes and ears simultaneously almost forced me to stop by the side of the road.  For a moment I didn't think about lymph nodes, Francis Bacon, or the need to perch serenely on the knife-edge of uncertainty.  There was only the visual buzz of the sumac, the honey locust and the maples, and the measured, majestic gracefulness of Bach.

Gothic Fantasy

Among the countless delights of my daily existence, one of the latest is my rediscovery of needlepoint. 

I was skeptical when the urge first hit me.  O.k., I said to myself, I'll get back into needlepoint, but I won't go whole hog.  I know all about my sudden urges, many of which--such as the one to carve wooden spoons--fade as quickly as the morning dew.  Others, like the desire to keep goats, come and go through the years.  The urge to write, that moaning continuo of my life, is one of the few that have stuck around.

By not going whole hog, I meant not investing major moneys on exquisite needlepoint kits reproducing entire medieval tapestries.  Instead, I went to a local shop, bought a harmless flowery pillow design, and went to work.  Or rather, play.  Or, perhaps, meditation.

But I found that struggling with the stiff canvas in my hands distracted me from my bliss, so I returned to the shop and bought a stretcher frame, and tacked the canvas onto it.  That was somewhat better, but not really what I wanted.  My heart's desire was a needlepoint stand, a contraption that sits on the floor and holds up your work so you can sit and embroider and feel...what?  Medieval, that's what.

The root of this desire probably lies in children's book illustrations of ladies in in wimples and long garments embroidering by Gothic windows, a troubadour at their feet, strumming his lute.  The embroidery stand by the broken-arch window, the lady and the troubadour, have been staples of my imagination ever since I can remember.

I went searching on the web, where the usual Aladdin's cave awaited me.  There are needlepoint stands out there that are works of art in themselves, mostly early-American and Victorian reproductions in walnut and cherry, and selling for thousands of dollars.  But as usual, if you look diligently, you find dark corners in the digital cave where even the humblest needs are met.  And so was mine, for well under $100.

Yesterday afternoon I set my needlepoint stand by the (non-ogival) porch windows and sat in an old straight-backed walnut chair, the basket of wools by my side.  It was raining, a gift in this odd, dry spring.  While the dogs napped on the floor around me, I threaded the needle with white for the background that would set off the central bouquet.

I put on Bach's Saint Matthew Passion, it being Palm Sunday, and embroidered my way through the whole thing, listening, in my barely-there German, for the words (the kiss, the cock's crow, the vinegar-soaked sponge) that elicited the old story.  Listening to Bach's dissonant chords, which seem to me the very sound of sorrow.
When it was over, I stood up and stretched, put the frame against the wall, and, feeling sorry for the house-bound dogs, took Wolfie and Bisou for a walk.  Even in the drizzle, a bird was singing, and I saw that the front field is almost completely green.

The Enigmatic Cellist

I was meeting two friends for dinner at the tiny restaurant in the upscale village.  It was warm enough that tables were still set up on the patio under a canopy.  We were led to one of these, but there was a problem:  between our table and the indoor dining room a man sat playing the cello. 

It was a fine sound, deep and clear.  I knew that I would not be able to eat, let alone talk, next to those thrumming notes, so I asked to be moved. The waiter looked annoyed, but went to arrange for a table inside.  The cellist glanced up from his score, and I felt sure he'd caught the gist of my request.  I was mortified that he must think I wanted to move because I didn't like his playing.

We followed the waiter indoors, and as I passed the cellist, I wished I could make eye contact, maybe smile--do something to let him know that the reason I wanted to move away from him was that he played too well.  We sat down and the wine arrived, and the basket of crusty bread, but I couldn't taste any of it because, through the chatter of the diners and the clatter of dishes and silverware, I could still hear the cello.  And it was distractingly, disturbingly good.

I looked at the people around us.  They were talking and eating, seemingly oblivious to the stream of high art wafting through the air.  Somewhere between the main course and dessert, the cellist began playing the Bach Cello Suites, one majestic, soulful movement after another--allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue....  Here is this man, I thought, pouring out this sublime stuff, and behind it lie years and years of lessons, scales, and auditions, performance anxiety and bouts of despair.  And now it had come to fruition...and here he was, in a restaurant, playing while we chewed our food.

I mentioned to the server how extraordinary the playing was. "Oh, he's good," he said, "he plays with the --- Symphony,"  and named one of the top orchestras in the U.S.  I couldn't believe it.  There are thousands of accomplished string players in the land today, only a handful of whom make it into the best orchestras.  I know that symphony orchestras have been having a hard time lately, but this guy's orchestra is still alive and active.  What was he doing playing in a restaurant?

Musicians have always supplemented orchestra salaries with other jobs.  My school uniforms and tuition were paid with the money that my father, a violinist, earned from chamber music gigs, recording sessions, or--steadiest but most disliked--private lessons or college teaching.  I know that in his early years as a musician, well before I was born, my father played waltzes at an exclusive tea-house in Barcelona.  But never again, after I knew him, did he play background music at a social event, much less at a restaurant.

Is the state of classical music today so dire that fine musicians are forced to play in restaurants, I wondered?  Perhaps the enigmatic cellist was just a friend of the restaurateur...or he was a musical masochist who enjoyed playing while people ignored him.  Eventually he stopped, and I was relieved--the tension of trying not to listen to the music had been wearing me out.

As we were leaving, I saw that the cellist had joined a couple at a table, and was eating with them.  Were they avid music lovers who, amazed to find such a star in their midst, had asked to buy him dinner?  Away from his instrument, the cellist looked affable but unremarkable as he cut into his roasted duck.  Again, as I walked by him I wanted somehow to let him know that he had been heard.  But he was munching away so contentedly that I figured he was happy with things just as they were.

Yoga In Weird Weather

It happens every year: a few days of false spring, which itself gives me a weird feeling, followed by some snow, and by cold, though not frigid weather, which makes me feel really weird. It happened today, and I'm feeling all at sixes and sevens, confused about what to wear (a thick sweater? layers?), confused about what to do (should I take the dogs out now, or later when it warms up...if it does?).

But now I'm going to yoga, and everything will be o.k. I will spread out my mat, breathe out, breathe in, and feel my "back body" on the earth, as instructed. I will mindfully stretch my leg up to the ceiling. I will flex and point my foot. I won't think about anything except pointing and flexing my foot. I will hear the familiar Japanese flute music playing in the background.

Slowly, mindfully, we will progress to more active poses, some of which I enjoy (forward bends of any kind--I love laying my cheek on my outstretched leg) and some of which I enjoy less (cobra: my feet keep trying to fly apart). I've been practicing these same moves for ten years, and somehow I, who get tired of things really fast, haven't gotten tired of them. There must be something to this yoga stuff after all.

Afterwards, I will drive home in the spring dusk, feeling settled and, ahem, centered somehow, as if I had listened to Bach for a long time.

Casals At 95: I Live!

I've been immersed in youtube videos of Pau Casals, the great cellist and interpreter of Bach. There are videos of him in his seventies, toddling around with his black umbrella in the villages of southern France, just over the border from his native Catalonia, which he never reentered after the Spanish Civil War, as a protest against the Franco regime. There are recordings of him playing the Bach Cello Suites, which he rediscovered and performed all over the world. There are tapes of his speeches, and his heart-breaking performance of a Catalan folk song at the U.N., when he was well into his nineties--his bowing shaky, his vibrato gone, but the feeling and the passion all there.

When he was 93, he continued to play the cello three hours every day, beginning with scales and arpeggios, and ending, every day, with one of the cello suites by Bach. When somebody asked him why he did this, he answered "I'm beginning to notice some improvement."

In one interview, he tells how, when he was seventeen, he was invited to perform for the Queen of Spain and her court. His mother went with him, along with a baby, one of Casals' many siblings. When, during the performance, the baby began to cry, Mrs. Casals, without a second thought, put him to her breast, and nursed him.

(That baby, by the way, grew up to be a fine violinist, who shared a music stand with my father in the Barcelona City orchestra, in the 1950s.)

In that same interview, the 95-year-old Casals is asked what keeps him going. "I can look at a tree, at a plant, for an hour. Such beauty!" he exclaims, raising his hands. "You see," he says, his black eyes twinkling, "most people don't live. I live!"

You can see Pau Casals (whose name in Catalan means "Paul," but also "peace") here.

September 9, 2008 "Music For The Queen"

The Queen Listens

When Pau Casals was a child prodigy, he played the cello for Queen Victoria. When he was an old man, and considered by many to be the finest musical interpreter of the century, he played for Golda Meir. Now, he plays for me.

He plays the Bach Cello Suites that he rescued from oblivion and practiced for years before performing publicly. He plays the Bach Gamba Sonatas, where the long sustained notes are among the purest sounds ever heard in the universe.

When Bach was a young man he walked 25 miles to hear the great organist Buxtehude play. But with the touch of a finger—in the car, the kitchen, the shower even—I can hear the best music ever written, music that for centuries only a tiny minority of human beings had access to. I'm not Frederick the Great, but I can listen to Mozart any time I want.

Music is all around us, and we don't hesitate to hum along with it, or ignore it. Music has become universally available only recently, just as brightly-colored man-made objects have a relatively short history. For millenia people lived with only the muted colors produced by natural dyes. Now bright, eye-popping color is everywhere, and many of us have grown almost blind to it. The blindness may be a defensive gesture, as today color often assaults our senses—think of the plastic toys defacing people's backyards, or the expanses of gaudy merchandise in many stores.

We are assaulted by music as well, in elevators, from passing cars, from computers. Handel is supposed to have fainted from sheer emotion when he heard the voice of a famous castrato. What would happen to him if he walked into a typical American house and heard his own Hallelujah Chorus issuing from the kitchen radio, advertising jingles coming out of the TV, and hip hop from the kid's bedroom? He would surely faint again, as would Fra Angelico if he walked into Toys R Us.

Sometimes I feel that I might faint too, if I can't get away from all the music. There has to be silence at certain times in order to really hear at other times. It is ironic that humankind has spent so much energy and effort making music universal, and now people like me spend energy and effort trying to get away from it.

Still, on the whole, I'd rather have it this way: Casals playing Bach, Alicia de Larocha playing Mozart, and Winton Marsalis playing anything, all at my fingertips. Where music is concerned, technology has made me an absolute monarch, and I don't even have to worry about hungry peasants threatening revolt.