Musical absurdities

In the autumn before we were married, I can remember sitting outside of a restaurant with Heather. I had been a little depressed, and at the time that meant that I had been listening to the music of Morton Feldman. Before I continue, I have to explain his music. You don't so much listen to Feldman's music as you enter his space and take it all in. This is contemplative music. It is music that is quiet and repetitive. It is abstract, often judged as the sonic equivalent of a Rothko painting. It is not something you sit back and enjoy. For me, it was as close to a religious experience as I had ever known, which is why I turned to it at these times, as a man may turn to God for guidance.

I was talking with Heather about Feldman's music and what it meant to me at the time.  It was all going to my head.   Feldman, the man, had an extraordinary gift for speech.  I had read two books of his essays and lectures, in which he explores the fabric of music itself.  It is impossible not to feel a little bit of a musical scientist as you read his words, discovering the depths and purity of the musical Art.  I ate this stuff up, because I believed, as I do now, that music could communicate more purely than speech.  Music, in its best, allows the very essence of people to open and transfer, not in a mystical way, but in a very real way.  To explore the fabric of music was, for me, to explore what it is that makes us human.  This is why I had become so enamored with Feldman.  In his music, he provided me with religion, in his words, he was Christ-like.  So I began to talk about music with Heather.  I remember discussing an objective musical reality, that there was something out there by which all music was judged. 

The absurdity of these ideas didn't phase me at the time, but I could begin to tell, in that instant outside the restaurant, that it was bothering Heather.  She understood less about where I was coming from that I did, but she did get a sense that she was losing me.  I had the sense that I was losing myself.  It was then that she declared that didn't like discussing music with me anymore.  This was an incredible blow to me, not only because of the great weight I gave to music, but of its place in our relationship to each other.  We became so close, so fast, because we both loved music.  But now it was becoming a wall between us, and this scared me.  I could have, at that moment, chosen an easy way out and dismissed her.  But, and let me pause for a prayer of thanksgiving, I didn't.  This singular event launched me on a study of what I really believed.  Because its absurdity was finally starting to sink in.