Bached

Well, if the hurricane is over, somebody should run down and tell the ocean the news.

The surf is as strong as ever. This morning, on the trot, I saw four rows of cresting waves, each wave perhaps 15 feet tall. It was a bit like being in an animated Japanese woodblock print.

If there’s music that only the young could write (see yesterday’s post) there’s also music only the old could create. And in the end, I always go back to Bach.

Started out with the Magnificat (WHAT!! the computer has just red-squiggled Magnificat and suggests instead magnificent!! Dear Reader, we live in degenerate and dangerous days!)—a tremendous piece of music.

And it’s music written with a sure hand by a man in full command of his talents.

Right, so I sat and watched the waves this morning, and heard Bach, and thought that perhaps there is no other composer who manages to capture a particular and wonderful emotion.

Exaltation.

When those trumpets start blaring away, in the first movement of the Magnificat, I’d better be in private, not public. My hands are incapable of remaining at my side, but are instead flung up in triumph to the heavens. I am a Roman emperor, striding in victory into the city. It’s aural orgasm.

Well, the Magnificat lasts only 20 minutes or so, and I wanted a bit more. I’d been living down in the “H’s” on my iPod (damn thing is jittery, so it was easier just to stick to Haydn and parts, and not try to move around too much) but I’d made the effort to move to the “B’s.” (Which is, of course, a pretty crowded neighborhood, in the city of classical music ….) So, time for the Mass in B minor.

To which I came late, as did Bach. (Sorry, combining me and Bach in the same sentence feels just a bit pretentious…)  In fact, I had heard it years ago, and stuck it in the “later” folder in my brain.

Warning to hypoglycemics—eat a FULL meal before you enter the concert hall. Even so, you may want to sneak in some jellybeans to munch on—it’s gonna be an hour and a half easily.

My main impression from that performance? A sense of failure as a listener. It was common in those days—I’d go to a concert with some heavy-duty music and I’d be in seat 33 in row F. Also, I’d be at the beach, mentally—at any rate far away. Not paying attention. Not giving the great music its due.

So the Bach went on and on—hey look at the trumpet player turn completely red wow is he gonna stroke out?—and I’d sit there—'bet the third chair cellist studied with Karl Fruh'—trying to listen—'he’s gotta be hung' days—and well, you get the picture.

I left feeling like I’d been Bached.

I wish someone had pointed out that there’s evidence that Bach never intended it all to be performed on a single occasion. And it might have helped if I had known that Bach completed it in his last year, though parts of the work were written years before.

So I sat, this morning, and thought about the hurricane that has left and is still going on. The people sitting alone in dark, cold apartments. The people who, as one commentator said, are not the homeless but now are.

Also thought about a cellist who morphed into a writer and didn’t go away, though why, I’ll never know. Mostly, he’s stubborn, I guess.

And there’s a lady who went away, and is now back. She’s stirring around, and will stir further, I’m sure. We go to the beach, most days, on the trot that has now incorporated the plunge. “Moe” I say to her, and she says, right—I’m on that.

Moe writes his thing.

“Brian,” I tell her.

Ditto.

“Let’s get into that water,” she says, and I throw her / me in, diving head first into a crashing wave, which spins us around and soaks us in its power, and we race laughing and exalted to the shore.

We’ve been Bached.