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I have been weary of all this wellness talk for some time. I realize I have not been very kind to a few people here, because I don’t tolerate the cultish air very well. Is wholesomeness really that valuable? It’s getting a tad too stale. I can’t breathe in a sterile environment. Positivity, equilibrium, productivity, healing, longevity. These notions are simply non congruent with my general attitude toward life. I crave the unapologetic, raw emotional outbursts of Brahms.
So I phoned my son this past Sunday and we attended a concert given by Jerusalem String Quartet. Pinkhas Zukerman was there. The audience was provincial and showed only rudimentary appreciation of the music performed (pardon my snobbery, I can’t help it, I am not a nice person). The music selection was sublime, abundant with shameless recapturing of youthful longings that were never fulfilled yet unextinguished. Its viola strokes evoked the image of my brother, who always understood every inch of me. A few summers ago I had to endure the all too familiar catastrophe as his body and soul disintegrated. Zukerman selected Brahms op.18 as if he knew that I was repudiating peace and choosing to hold onto a lifetime of mourning. I desperately need to believe that my brother’s suffering was more dignifiable than the mundane tranquility we all are so eager to pursue. During the intermission, I refused to talk to the lady who approached me to strike a conversation by saying something unforgivably banal about Brahms. I don’t understand such a language. My son chuckled. The kid knows me inside out, just like my brother did.
Music is not palliative. It does not have healing power. Music makes me more prone to extreme distress. But I am not interested in managing my pain. Brahms listens to me when even God does not. He shows his understanding through his six voice architecture, he always knew my brother’s death was to be followed by another premature death, then another, before I knew. And he tells me that, all my sacrifices were in vain and soon my mourning will die too, even though that is the only precious thing I have left in me. We open a book in resignation, and trace the saddest lines we could find.
Bruckner: Adagio from Quintet in F Major
Dvorak: Sextet Op.48 in A Major
Brahms: Sextet Op.18 in Bb Major
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