{"id":5602,"date":"2012-08-19T07:31:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-19T12:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=5602"},"modified":"2012-08-19T07:31:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-19T12:31:23","slug":"being-addicted-to-love-is-much-like-being-addicted-to-making-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2012\/08\/19\/being-addicted-to-love-is-much-like-being-addicted-to-making-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Being addicted to love is much like being addicted to making music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A few hours of recommended staring-at-sky-and-clouds time yesterday left me wondering why I make music.<\/p>\n

Listening is easy; it’s never further than an arm’s reach away and it does not compel unbroken engagement. But making music absolutely demands that one set aside a chunk of distraction-free time; if the mind strays, the effort becomes a house of cards crashed by an out-of-control 2-year-old.<\/p>\n

In a world that demands constant multitasking, focusing on just one thing is a challenge. It’s even more daunting after a long workday or when surrounded by a young family.<\/p>\n

So, for an amateur, making music is first and foremost an act of will.<\/p>\n

Like the vast majority of people who grow up with childhood music lessons and just enough ability to consider a possible professional career, I have done other things with my life. But I’ve kept making music as an aside, mainly by working as the music director in church. Initially as a 17-year-old, I took it on out of curiosity, then it was for the money.<\/p>\n

Now, it guarantees a minimum contact with the real, difficult act of making rather than just consuming music.<\/p>\n

My friends read and lounge and brunch on Sunday mornings. In the summer, they overnight at their or someone else’s cottage. I could, too, my non-churchgoing partner gently reminds me.<\/p>\n

I try to set aside an hour’s practice time every day. That’s nothing for a professional, but it’s just enough to get me by. The accumulated hours are enough to get me into communion with something far, far greater than my self.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure this feeling comes from the same endocrine elixir that keeps marathon runners and mountain climbers glued to their passions.<\/p>\n

It may even be similar to what people call being addicted to love.<\/p>\n

One perfect summer afternoon not that long ago, a friend and I were listening to Richard Strauss as we gently rocked in hammocks on his flower-bedecked terrace. At one point, he lamented how the throes of passionate love get blunted with age; that it becomes more and more difficult to feel as deeply, to soar as ecstatically, to reduce the rest of the universe to a speck of dust when facing the object of one’s infatuation.<\/p>\n

I responded that if we went through life on this kind of rollercoaster, we would eventually go mad.<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s sunny sky reminded me that I do feel deeply, soar ecstatically and reduce the universe to a speck of dust — in those transcendent moments when a piece of music has come alive through my exertions and will, either alone or when playing or singing with others.<\/p>\n

Unlike making love, it takes years of practice and preparation to reach this state. That can be dicouraging.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, once you get there, the act of making music rarely lets you down. It becomes self-sustaining, hopefully for life.<\/p>\n

+++<\/p>\n

I wondered what this sort of special communion between soul and music would sound like to someone else. So, to illustrate, here is French pianist Anne Queff\u00e9lec playing George Frideric Handel — not an obvious choice, perhaps, but one that works for me in my one-on-one time with the keyboard.<\/p>\n

Here she is in the Keyboard Suite No. 6<\/em>, from Handel’s first collection, in F-sharp minor, HWV 431:<\/p>\n