November 2009 Archives

I was walking in the desert
Looking over my shoulder at the mirage we just passed
I looked up at the hot Sun
My whole body cried tears of broken trust

Then I looked ahead, what a mistake!
I usually just look down, watching each step
But I forgot that was what I was supposed to do
I got distracted and a little confused

For I walked right into that hole in the sand
And it sucked me into that other land
If you thought the desert was bad, you should come here
There's no ground to walk on

It's so unreal, yet it's so real
And it's kind of freaky
My head's over there, my heart's somewhere else
Oh, and there's an arm that just went flying by

I can see back through the hole I fell in
Someone's reaching in to pull me out
Do I grab on? How can I?
Do I want to come back out?

Do I resume walking in the desert always looking down?
Or do I want to keep falling towards the light?
But then I decide...
I'm going to end my life.

This also was written in the early 90s. I am beginning to explore what I knew and experienced back then as a way to help me in the present. As I wrote in the prior post, I'm beginning to understand that parts of me hold onto these views and ways of thinking even to this day; and that it's my job to help them heal and evolve. I think this poem reflects a certain understanding and conflict about the process of healing. It was a very dark time for me. Luckily, I am not consistently in this place anymore.

We did what he told us
He said it was for God

"Don't disobey!"
We knew what that meant
We would be disobeying God

"It'll be our little secret"
This is what we were told
By the priest who we thought was God

This was written in 1993. But, for me, it's very relevant today. It's become quite clear that parts of me have not been able to move beyond the past at all. That's terribly unfortunate and so inconsistent with the rest of my life. For so long, I have failed to accept that fact. I have to rededicate myself to these parts of me and help them heal. Right now, though, I feel devastated and broken. I will try to pick up the pieces and move on. But it will not be easy.

These are the lyrics to a blues song I wrote when my daughter was just a couple years old. I wrote it with my little cousin who we were babysitting for a weekend. Thought people here may enjoy it.

My last post talked about music's role in my life and in my healing, with particular emphasis on Beethoven and his Eroica symphony.

What I want to do here is a bit more provocative and focussed. In that last post, I mentioned Beethoven's Große Fugue. In my opinion, that piece is in a class all by itself and has the power to have an unfathomable impact on those of us who live with complex mental issues, and dissociative disorders in particular.

The fugue was written along with Beethoven's five late quartets from 1825-26 (he died in 1827). I'll give a small musical analysis of this piece only so that readers can see why this piece would mean something to someone who deals with a dissociative disorder.

There are countless works of art and music which grapple with complexity. In the music world, the quartets of Bartók and Schoenberg are in that extreme. Michael Jackson's "This is It" movie reviews are fawning over the glimpses into his musical creativity, but (and I'm showing extreme bias here) can you imagine the disparity if a similar documentary were made showing live footage of Beethoven creating some of his master works?

For me, the Große Fugue is a journey into complexity which mirrors the complexity of my inner workings. If I can manage to actually pay attention to it for its entirety, I find it incredibly soothing and validating (which is probably a bit counter-intuitive). What's amazing is that it is a marriage between the pleasing sonata and abstract musical constructs. There are myriad changing keys, rhythms, and tempi. Musical concepts which stop and start unexpectedly and, some would say, and correctly so, violently. There's an incredible amount of dissonance (notes which sound "unpleasant") and counterpoint which makes sense of distinct melodies, causing notes to work against other notes.

The piece starts out with several broad strokes of clear musical ideas in several fits and starts. Each one of these ideas could be taken by itself and go on its own and present a perfectly pleasing piece. But Beethoven doesn't do that. Instead, he throws all these ideas out there, almost like he's saying "I could do this, or that, or this other." But then he launches into what could be perceived as chaos; a first fugue in B-flat that is nearly impossible to follow. Objectively, most people would hear this and say it's "quite unpleasant". In fact, when it debuted in 1826 as the last movement to the quartet in B-flat, the response was so uncomprehending that Beethoven was forced to change the ending by his publisher and issue the Große Fugue as a standalone work. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Beethoven go that news from his publisher!

Eric Lewis, violinist in the Manhattan String Quartet, described this piece by saying: That piece is beyond all analogy in art, and so I reach for this image; a cosmic storm where the laws of the universe are transmuted in gravitational tides so strong they destroy the known laws of harmony. The G-flat section is a reprise between the two event horizons where time is non-existent. Paradoxical states of consciousness are made understandable and prepare one for the final journey through the A-flat fugue to a vision of a parallel universe in another dimension. I am sure Beethoven took that journey and left his impressions of that universe.

So, I ask: Who knows more about parallel universes than the dissociative?

For those of us who struggle with dissociation or internal parts of our personality that gets in the way of our functioning, we are constantly trying to explain our internal world to ourselves and to others in order to make sense of it and heal. To my ears (and heart and mind), the Große Fugue is Beethoven making sense of my experience. Thank you Herr Beethoven!

For an interesting article, see: Alex Ross' Great Fugue, The New Yorker, Feb. 6, 2006.

For video of this piece, see: Alban Berg Quartet on YouTube, Part I (and also Part II); it's no substitute for a quality audio recording.

Finally, a friend of mine shared with me a TED talk on music which you may find enjoyable. See: Benjamin Zander on Music and Passion; albeit he speaks of a different type of classical music from the one discussed here.