Receieved a great comment in the middle of the night last night from a friend (pretty sure I know who). The comment was so good I wanted to include it as a post so everyone could see it easily...and so I can respond. See below:
"I used to think of my life as expositions and episodes, to borrow from fugal analysis. Expositions were the theme of my life, or what I thought of as the theme of my life, and I looked for them to be strong and loud and clear. Of course these were followed my episodes where I had no idea what was going on, but I tried to enjoy the pretty things around me as I moved to my next exposition. Lately I've been feeling like this gives too much artificial structure to the swirling chaos around me. That, when you get down to it, everything is episode and nothing is really exposition. That life is one big fantasia instead of fugue. Or for you non-music folks, life is all one big transition. Nothing is repeated, we just follow the flow and try to enjoy it as things go by. Since I've started thinking about life this way, I feel more at ease. Both with the world around me and the person I am. I'm no longer trying to make pieces of life fit into preconceived slots in my world view, and I see that the only thing I can really work on is myself. Life becomes simpler. I'm no longer trying to control things, I'm just trying to be me."
My response:
Don't let me give the impression that I am desperately looking to enforce order on my life. That's not it. As an example, one of the biggest annoyances I had during the last few months of chaos was people trying to chalk it all up to "God's plan" with a sweep of the broom and thus explain it all away, or somehow imply that the order in it was just too big to see. Both of these concepts I can agree with at times, but for various reasons, I was, and am still, not convinced that this was the case...this time. Sometimes, things happen. I don't want this to be a God post, but the short version is, we are free to make our own mess...and our society is free to make its own mess, and if we live in that society and enjoy its benefits, we are also subject to its whims and repercussions. Which means, as happened to me, you can get caught up in a swirl of events which in the end have nothing to do with you personally. Stuff happens. And there may be no 'reason' for it on the individual level. Having the desperate need to attach God to the situation indicates to me a fear of this reality of interconnectedness. I for one have no problem with it.
But back to the point - my previous post, showing the recurring moments in my life coming full circle, and the comment generated by who I think is an old friend in a different time zone. I think life has the potential to be any kind of composition. It might be for some, a beautifully structured fugue, or a Gabrieli antiphonal masterwork. For others it might be pure minimalism, perhaps grating on the ears but easily understood and therefore comforting. For some, it might be intentionally discordant and inexplicable to many, but with a rigid underlying structure...Schoenberg perhaps? And to others, it may be avant-garde. Or your example, all fantasia - just the whims of the music.
Who is in charge? The music or the composer? And are we the composer, or are we just fed the music and allowed to analyze it as a way to understand our lives better? I think it's a little of each. I think we're given raw materials, and our life composition is a combination of music with a will and force of its own, and our reactions and responses to it. And we even have a degree of freedom to alter and add to that material if we so choose. And I believe that for no specific reason, some of us get raw materials that are easily malleable and let us have great control, and others of us get a theme that pretty much dictates what else will happen. So it's not fair to say that someone with chaos in their life didn't control that music better...maybe that fantasia could have been given some more structure...but would it then be less beautiful and less what it was meant to be? A fantasia and a fugue are not the same, but both are beautiful and serve a purpose.
So, as for me...I certainly don't think my life is a fugue. And I do not go through my life trying to force pieces in place that are not there. But as I continue to work on the composition of my life, it's impossible to ignore the recurring themes. My raw material was constructed that way, and in major recapitulation points, themes return. I find it comforting to see those themes re-emerge from time to time, like an anchor point in a sometimes overlong Mahler symphony. It helps me know where I am.
And maybe I could spend a lot more time and energy trying to force my symphony into sonata form, but I have no interest in that. I'm not a detail person at that level. I'm a big picture guy. And I like to look at the overall shape, the ebb and flow, the story arc. The stuff I can see without my glasses on. Details are often ugly.
So to respond to your comment, old friend...I think we're both right in some sense. And your music may sound strange to some, but I think that you have made a conscious choice to let your music happen, combined with a theme that was destined to write itself...and I respect that. Who knows what will happen next? To any of us? Great discussion.
As the song goes, "This is me...that's who I'm trying to be". Amen.
Achtung, Schattenjagers
5 months ago
