Jean-Yves Thibaudet made me cry

Yesterday beautiful music made me cry. I was so touched and moved by Jean-Yves Thibaudet's piano performance of the second movement of Ravel's piano concerto in G (Adagio assai), that my heart and soul were so full of emotion, that slowly the tears were just meandering over my sunny face.

We had spent the day at Tanglewood for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's All Ravel program under the direction of Emmanual Krivine. As always, our day started with a bit of stress to get ready - I have high expectations what a proper picnic looks like and therefore put a lot of effort into it - and a grumpy child had not realized it was an all day affair and had to say no to a spontaneous pool party invitation. Her bad mood lingered on for a few hours, but the special atmosphere on the lawn at Tanglewood slowly soothed her mind enough to be bearable. Two Shrewsbury friends hooked up with us on the lawn, which was wonderful and changed the dynamic of our group and made for nice conversation.

Tanglewood is rather special, the huge music hall called shed opens to the fantastic old park with beautiful trees and a wonderful lawn. Hundreds of groups of people scatter over the lawns with their chairs, blankets and gourmet picnics. We got a very nice place close to the Koussevitzky Music Shed and had a much better sound experience than prior visit (sunburn included). So imagine all these people hanging about on a lovely Sunday afternoon, surrounded by the gorgeous Berkshire mountains, having fun and conversation. A few times the old bell rings and all of a sudden the concert starts and amazingly, from one second to another, it is dead silent. You could hear the grass grow.

The program started with the Mother Goose Suite and I had forgotten how much I love The Fairy Garden and it transported me far away into my dream world. The suite was followed by the concerto and well deserved standing ovations and repeated appearances of Krivine and Thibaudet. The amazing concerto for the left hand (very interesting story!), which I could not even do with both of my hands and the Bolero finalized the concert.

The piano is a magnificent instrument, but it is not very often that a pianist just completely blows me away and touches something so deep inside me, I have no words to describe it. Maybe too often it is perfection and mechanics and not magic? I had known Tchaikovsky's piano concerto No. 1 for many years as a teenager and never cared for it that much. Then I heard it played by Ivo Pogorelić and I swear, it was an utterly different piece and I had to listen to it three times in a row and again and again for many days. It was a revelation and so was Thibaudet yesterday.

I think it is very interesting how the same piece of music / same score can be so different in outcome depending on the orchestra and director. I remember when CDs were still newer and I would listen to every recording of a piece to see which one spoke to me. Karajan for example never spoke to me, strange, I cannot even tell you exatly why. For years I could not find a recording of Schubert's 8th Symphony that I liked. I once heard a recording of Dvoraks New World Symphony that hit me so deep, I pulled to the side of the road and sat there, tears streaming down through the whole symphony and it was like nothing else existed at that moment.

When everything is right and the interpretation speaks to you in all your depth, something amazing happens inside you, connecting heart and soul and rationale and whatever else lingers inside us. I am extremely grateful that Thibaudet mad me cry tears of beauty, to remind me again why I love Ravel so very much and also fling back into my life the one thing that always helps me in more difficult times: the magic of music.

Nothing exists without music, for the universe itself is said to have been framed by a kind of harmony of sounds, and heaven itself revolves under the tones of that harmony.
Isodore of Seville (c.568-636 AD) archbishop and saint

A new approach to un-clutter

I hold on to too many things.

For one I always have ideas what I could use things for and I have so many things in the first place, because I have so many ideas. I have spent money on them and maybe I find time to use them one day for my many great ideas, in theory.  Meanwhile, I am running out of space, have less and less time to actually turn my ideas into something tangible and even if I do, I am not as good as I used to be, since I have a general loss of patience and peace. My sewing, carpentry and art skills were definitely at a better place before my brain got fragmented due to living a life in quarter hour chunks. And then there are the boxes and boxes of material and product of my sort of defunct company, since I want to devote myself to writing, which is the purpose of my existence actually. But I have a hard time really saying goodbye forever to my company.

Then there are mementos of my former life - too many, even though I reduced them greatly before filling a container and shipping it from Bavaria to Los Angeles in '96. I had figured that great memories will stay in my head and it was a moving ritual to burn old love letters in the fireplace one by one - that was before I had mommy-brain-dementia. And then there is my first laptop, a whole lot antique kitchen things from ancestors long ago .... I get a headache just looking into that corner and my gaze moves to the boxes of decorations - Halloween and Easter quite manageable, but Christmas? O Gosh. I could go on and on with this list, but I assume it is already rather boring.

The thing is, it all ties me down, makes me crazy, leaves no room in a tangible and spiritual sense - I need to free myself. But how? I have been trying for so long and it just does not get better - or should I say less? It is not that I am a hoarder, we donate a lot, happily give things to friends and family, Freecycle and Craigslist things away. Still, the pace is not right. So I had an idea.

Having been so utterly unhappy with my existence as a whole - happy in some fragments though - I have been creating this parallel dream world that I escape to. Partially it came out of real dreams at night, which makes the people, the place, the voices, the scents and sounds very real in my head. This all is happening in England, an old, charming country home. So I asked myself, if this would be true and not a dream, what would I take with me? What would be important? Voila, I have my angle. I imagine I am preparing for a move in a couple of month and I picture myself with I-will-not-name-who-I-dream-about and our oh so harmonious and wonderful life and guess what, it makes it SO much easier to let go.

I wonder if we can take little pieces of our day dreams and turn them into something real, some small details and bigger ideas as well. Dreaming and hoping are incredible forces if they are not tethered onto expectations I think. I have to do a lot of sorting, 14 bins and boxes of paperwork from the kids are my start (some huge Rubbermaid storage containers), surely a few drawings and little stories they wrote and some cards they made are enough to come with me. Even if I really not going anywhere.

claymation camp

The girls went to a claymation camp at the Worcester Art Museum and this is their first movie: I think it is very cute and I hope they do more!

Vicious cycle of pain, depression and desperation

This is a serious rant about the state I am in and I am not sure if this is something I should even post here in this public place of my blogosphere.... but then again, life is not always sunshine and cupcakes and smiles and all good. I mostly pretend to be the happy and balanced person, at least most people think that of me and I am very good at hiding what is really going on. One of the lessons of being bullied as a kid, when I learned not to show any kind of emotion. So here, I will say it and if it comes to haunt me, so be it.

Lately I am derailed off my tracks at any instant. From teeny tiny things like putting a lot of quarters in the parking meter at the library only to find it closed (budget cuts) or two bathing suits disintegrating within 3 days (quality cuts + chlorine) to the big things like not getting a handle on my health. My severe Endometriosis ist being treated with shots of hormones helping me to not spend a majority of my time with ridiculously bad pelvic cramps. The down side of the medication though, beside the weight gain and loss of lust (sorry could not resist, sounds so funny 'loss of lust') it makes me swing between extreme anger and severe depression with constant crying fits. Obviously that is not a solution. At times I wish I would drop dead. So there, I said it.

I read somewhere that one of the side effects is psychosis and I wonder if that is why I feel that I am completely alone and have no friends whatsoever, which rationally I know not to be true, well, maybe - I cannot tell, because my brain feels to muddled. I know that I know a lot of really nice people here, but what I definitely miss is a best friend though. I had one from teenage years to motherhood at which point our tracks went in completely different directions and were absolutely incompatible. But I miss having a best friend who you take small vacations with, full of adventure, visit exhibitions and go to concerts, help each other with whatever and mostly talk about anything and at any time and well, you probably know, if you ever had that one person closest, a person who really knows you and understands you. I am lonely. I felt lonely before the medication, now I feel forsaken. So there, I said it.

 The depth of the problem is compounded by my lower back problems. My three disks were doing alright until I was so utterly stupid to lift two 80 pound cement bags, because I really wanted a project done. Of course I have been out of commission since that stupid move and the project is further away from completion than before. My chiropractor is trying everything he can to get everything back in order, I swim and swim and swim, take enough Ibuprofen to blow a big hole into my stomach lining, ice it over and over and relax it with valium. I can hardly make it through the day without painkillers. So there, I said it.

All my projects are on hold and my sole existence is to serve my seemingly grumpy and ungrateful, but sometimes very funny and definitely loved children. It seems that I do nothing much but drive them to and from places, get or return friends, shop and cook for them and their friends. The explosive and attention challenged one is riddled with teenage-hormonal rollercoaster like mood swings and in turn makes me explode, since my reserves are all drained by the little genius with the necessity to have everything in her life micromanaged by me, essentially making me have to live her life on top of mine. My children drive me insane. So there, I said it.

And while I write this, I get another of these crazy crying fits and I think to myself, this is not me actually. But something is seriously broken. I am broken - there, I said that, too. And now? Well, life goes on, I'll wipe the tears away and take my children and three of their friends to the lake, pretending that the abyss in my soul is not there and succeed half the time through distraction and company. So there.