The Importance of Craziness, part 1

Back in seminary, we started practicing some goofy music. At the time, I thought, “why on earth are we singing this craziness?” Now I understand: it was so I would have interesting things to talk about later.

“Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter, bind a Leopard to the altar, and consecrate his spear to the Lord.” – from Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart (1722-1771).

It was – quite literally – craziness. Christopher Smart was in an insane asylum at the time. Benjamin Britten took the poetry and set it to music that fit the mood: idiosyncratic, one might say.

I remembered all this while I read a review for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s performance of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's concerto "Nobody knows de trouble I see."

Apparently, the music was written in the 50’s in postwar Germany and, as the reviewer put it, “it represents the attempt of a German composer to find a place for an African American spiritual in the world of the then-new German music, which was trying to replace old-fashioned emotion with the scientific method.”

I wondered if perhaps this composer felt the postwar impulse to banish pathos in favor of logos was motivated by well-intentioned fear. Perhaps, trying to find a more wholistic voice that combined all parts of the self, he sought a voice of sorrow that could moan its hopeful pain through a highly structured musical medium.

As the reviewer points out, Zimmerman later killed himself, “caught in a nightmare from which he couldn't escape.”

Tragedies of this sort raise complicated questions for me. In the modern world, how many of our crazy artists would simply be medicated into happiness… have the pathos driven straight out of them? Is what we seek in psychoanalysis the discovery of a fully logical self? What of the passionate self? (This is, of course, completely ignoring ethos, the third leg of the classic rhetorical tripod).

Hmmm…. More on this later…

Are you doing any Journalling?

Once upon a time, during a particularly horrible time in my life, I was asked, "Are you doing any journalling?"

I think the idea was that, if I was journalling, it would give me an outlet. But I knew better. If I journalled, I would have a record of what was going on: how I was feeling, what was happening to me, etc.

So, "No - I'm not," I responded, "I don't want to remember what this feels like."

Every once in awhile I'm reminded of what that time was like, and still I'm glad I didn't journal my way through it. Sometimes the forgetting is important. But the limited remembering is nice, because it gives me perspective. "You see?" the Remembering says to me, "you've grown!"

Last night I finally saw "The Constant Gardener" for the first time, and I really liked it (I can always tell how much I like a movie by whether or not I watch the "extra features" on the DVD. If I REALLY like it, I'll rewatch the whole thing with the Director's commentary).

There's a scene where Ralph Fienne's character is back in London - at the house owned by his recently murdered wife, and all the memories of their former joyous life come flying back at him. His grief overcomes him (or more probably, kicks its way through his masculine facade) and plasters his face and fist up against the window, wracked in his sobbing.

And I thought, "you know - if he collapsed on the ground right now that would totally be me like 4 years ago..."

I'm glad I didn't write it down, but I'm glad I can remember sometimes.