Drug of Choice

When my son was a little boy, there was an adorable little bit he used to do.  With exaggerated facial gestures, he would act out, “Happy New Year, Sad New Year, Mad New Year.”  It was a silly thing, but for the last few days it has been echoing through my mind.  It reminds me how quickly our oblivious happiness can be cut short, replaced with unbearable sadness, and followed by righteous anger. 

Since the Newtown tragedy there has been an outpouring of support as people sign petitions and “Like” online photo arrays.  These are silly token gestures, but we are all desperate to find something that we can do.  I suppose that reaching out to find shared pain is a productive enterprise at some level.  One of the more disappointing swells of activity I have observed is the shocking number of people who have rallied to decry gun control efforts in the aftermath, knowing that this tragedy will put gun control into the political crosshairs.  There are some things about humans I will never understand.

What I do understand, however, is the healing power of music.  It has been interesting to watch the sensitivity with which networks have resumed regular programming, knowing that it is their job to make people laugh and feel good yet taking a moment here and there to offer the buffer of a choir of children, or a heart-wrenching inspirational ballad.  Tonight on The Voice, the judges and contestants opened with Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, each singer holding a placard with the name of one of the fallen children.  The stage was lined with memorial candles.  As they sang, the artists’ eyes welled with tears, each of them breathing to embrace the depth of the lyrics and the heartbreaking arc of the melody line.

In that moment, I closed my eyes and felt the music enter me.  The malaise of these last days is still there, but it was somewhat lessened by the rehabilitative power of the music.  As the final three contestants completed their final performances, they offered a collection of entertaining and inspiring tunes, each one raising my energy by a degree.  It will still take time to recover from the horrifying display of man’s inhumanity and violence, but through the music I am finding hope and comfort.

Because I have lived my life steeped in music, I have a vast store of musical go-tos that serve as my spiritual medicine cabinet.  The second movement of Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony is something I use when I allow myself to mourn.   It is a warm hug when I need a good cleansing cry.   I tap into Ravel’s Swan of Tuonela when I want something transcendent to release myself from all physical trappings.  Within its fanciful breezes I find color and beauty with an absence of pain.  It’s like a morphine drip without side effects.   For despair, I go to Chopin’s enigmatic Mazurka in g-minor, Op. 67.  He was so very ill he would have known or feared his life was at an end, yet his sorrow cannot overpower the hope that shines through the simple and brief melody.  I have written in past blogs about the unusual power of the key of g-minor; that Chopin was caught in a g-minor mood at the end of his life is not at all surprising to me.

I have told my husband on many occasions that if I were to be lying terminally ill, I would want to hear the slow movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto.  Composed in the key of B major (a striking tonal contrast to the E-flat main key of the concerto), this movement possesses a melody that can only be described as “heaven sent.” (It is rumored to be the inspiration for Leonard Bernstein’s Somewhere from West Side Story.)  There is a something exposed and vulnerable about this gem.  It is what I imagine a choir of heavenly angels would be singing. 

So many of the great composers suffered personal pain or debilitating illness:  Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Gershwin, Tschaikovsky, Brahms.  It is inspiring that such beautiful music would be the byproduct of a painful journey.  It is the triumph of will over circumstances, evidence of the enduring human spirit.

For those of you who, like me, have trouble making sense of what is going on in this world, tap into a classical music station to sample my personal drug of choice.  It is powerful, state altering, victimless, and free.