More on language…

this sonata has actually nothing with moonlight to do! It was written after a close friend's death. And you can hear the fury in the last movement (see below). Are these things possible to express in words?? Are there things we can't express in words?

Are we really prepared to listen to a child’s trials to express what it has experienced and feels? Expressed with its “limited” language!

And are we prepared to listen to a grown up and what he/she actually is trying to say?
Or are we only prepared to listen to those with the best language?

AND to the most intelligent (at least the seemingly most intelligent)? Whom we admire a lot?
So long as the other person isn’t really mean or harming, why don’t we, shouldn’t we?

Putting some (or many) things in words isn’t easy. Putting certain things in words IS difficult, and sometimes even impossible! But it isn’t sure all people have difficulties with the same things! Or have any significant difficulties expressing themselves at all (but they are quite few)? Probably depending on their history and experiences up until now?

When we aren’t really heard many of us tend to use more and more words? Either in speech or written words? Or both? When we are speaking for deaf ears we use more and more words?

If we aren’t heard either by other people or/and by ourselves? Maybe we need to use all those words until we get heard by other people and/or ourselves? And need to search ourselves forward with the language we have (for the moment)? We can have deaf ears for ourselves too? Be blind for actual opportunities of different kinds too and for actual, genuine appreciation and liking, sometimes even love that is in reach? If so, isn’t that sad? Maybe even very sad? In the worst cases walking a whole long life without realizing what we could have gotten and achieved?

Maybe we need to express things in spoken and/or written words until we hear or see what we are saying?

And nobody stands up there with a perfect language, as a perfect musician (or anything else), no matter how talented we are or were from the beginning. Even if not so few thinks so, even among grown up people! Even among “intelligent” people! In music we will never get full learned!

Even the most talented need exercise and training! Even a Mozart needed! And he got that exercise very early in life! But what did he suffer? A training a Beethoven never got? The former produced a lot of music very easily and quickly, and the latter struggled very hard. But he too produced fantastic, great music (in many persons’ eyes - and ears)!

Practician…

The letter
(which one of our students is going to sing in the church at the concert tomorrow evening).

According to a test on what blog type you are the result for me was that I am a practician! I was moderately flattered by his.

I have been out for a bike-ride before lunch, sneezing and coughing, recovering from a cold.
Yesterday I watched a TV-programme (I had a TV-evening yesterday!) about a new book on Ingmar Bergman. The author, Michael Timm (in my age I guess), said about Bergman, with whom he had developed a fairly close friendship, that he was lively, changeable, energetic, quick, very curious, after an interview on half an hour Bergman got tired and started to ask the interviewer a lot of questions instead of the opposite.

I also came to think of how extremely organized Bergman was. He was always extremely well prepared in his work. He had a fixed schedule every day for his writing at Fårö; for his walks, when he visited his cinema and watched films each evening and so on. He needed to keep his demons (or “dämoner” as he called them in Swedish) in check.

And he avoided psycho therapy (but what sort would he have gotten then?) because I guess he believed that his neurosis was the prerequisite for his creativity, that he would loose it if he came to terms with them. As I think many creative people thought then (and maybe still think too often). But what was he actually afraid of? The truth lay just under the surface and he was aware of it, on an unconscious or subconscious level, and was in touch with the panic connected with it?

During the tax-affair (round 1975) he got a psychic breakdown and landed on a psychiatric clinic and was heavily medicated, so he walked there like a zombie. But he decided to quit all medication, and did that abruptly too, and met all the anxieties. He has described this in one of his books. And left Sweden with his wife Ingrid (by the way the author of the new book on Bergman thinks Bergman had had women who could measure up to him actually, and contribute to his work. Know that he and the pianist-wife Käbi Laretei inspired each other a lot, but they had a mutual respectful fear or each other? And Bergman later said that they played roles to each other, didn’t dare to meet as real, genuine human beings, meetings between two genuine , true selves, or how one shall express it).

Yes, maybe one has to be organized with artistic works struck me. Boundaries are more important there than in many other works and occupations? We need limits, in our work. And all artists aren’t bohemians, as maybe many thinks? Because for the first you need a lot of discipline to come where you have come! To develop the skill you have developed. And for this you can’t be too bohemian? If you aren’t lucky having someone a housekeeper and mommy?

k. – the spontaneous! Not always weighing the words, hmmm… Spontaneously expressing things, thoughts etc. Behind a certain amount of shyness. Not having a censurer - and having one. Blushing red sometimes (or rather often): but what did I say? And how? How childish! How stupid! How stupid, childish ideas!

Also struck me the other day about an older friend who has known me for long, who said she thought that people maybe could react on my quick thinking… That they didn’t really keep up with it. I don’t know if this was so good telling me however.

Yes, only a word or expression can trigger a lot of thoughts and feelings. And when I write I can start in one end and end in an entirely different, with a million sidetracks?

And after having worked with young people for so many years my language has also got coloured by that sort of language? When I studied pedagogy once (beside full time work) I expressed myself differently, adapted a bit to that language? The same when I was student at a tutor-education at the Royal College of music in Stockholm (5 years ago, 7, 5 international academic points).

No, now I need to practice for 2, 5 - 3 hours. And it would be nice getting time on the balcony with a cup of tea with honey (need that for my cold). Have thought of taking the bike to town and the pharmacy to buy something for my nose, Renaissance I had thought of.

Your genuine self...

about Walpurgis Eve and 1 May here.

Something I read gave me an aha-experience (when I searched on aha-experience "Eureka!!" came up), a person thinking that all creative activity, whatever, is a communication with ones genuine, true self. You have to ask all the time (during the creative activity) what you want, what you like, what awakes you to life - and then express this. A sort of research into oneself? To shape or form yourself. Maybe this is even more important for a person who has been indistinct or vague and to a high degree invisible.

But this isn’t always the case I would say as working in an artistic profession!!! There are so much there what you shall and not shall, what you shall like and not like, work with or not!!! And we shall be sensitive to our pupils and their needs and wishes. But does these two have to be opposites?

Yes – and I must be allowed this too was what struck me!! I must be allowed to prefer some sorts of creative expressions more than other, because I feel for them. At least privately! Even if I have to use music in my work I am not always very fond of.

But this doesn’t have to mean I put what I prefer above other expressions! But, of course it can be so too; that people put their own before other people’s choices and preferences, thinking this is better than other peoples' choices. Many times they/we do. Is this even more forbidden for me than for others?

I have a male colleague just above 30 having very strong preferences for certain music, composers etc. And who also strongly dislikes other forms, sorts, composers, even instruments!!

My preferences, what I like more or most; in music, in other artistic expressions is me. Or an expression for what my history has formed me to. Maybe which can make me visible and distinct more and more, the more I listen to this, which I think I haven't really done. Something I should answer to much more than I do? Not be ashamed of or silence or make invisible?

Allow myself gladly.

Because this is me, what I feel for, what communicates with me!

And I read something else which also made me wonder and react strongly at against this morning before I went to work (and hadn't time blog about it then) what Miller said about true enlightenment…Had to search for it. Found it in my amateur translation from this posting:

Miller writes (page 145 in the Swedish edition of ”The Drama…”) that a human being who has worked her/his own destiny’s tragedy through consciously can at last (much more) plainly apprehend her human fellow beings suffering, even if that person still has to belittle it.

"She can’t make fun of (or scorn) other people’s feelings [people still struggling with their healing for instance, and maybe not so successfully], of whatever sort they are, if she can take her own feelings seriously. She will not let the vicious circle of contempt continue."