The Dead

They (and who are they, I wonder?) say that April showers bring May flowers, and though the sentiment might have some validity in other parts of the country, it does not possess much of that here in the Midwest. Having lived for the past thirty-four years in this area, I recognize that what I’ve learned is that the showers of April consist mostly of snow and the wisest flowers wait until well into June to poke their lovely heads above ground. In April I remain frustratingly indoors looking out of the window and watch the white flakes cover yet again and coat the still frozen ground. To the hopeful adage above, at this time of year I think rather of T.S. Eliot’s thought, “April is the cruelest month.” Alas, here even May teases Spring and does not deliver. But now it is October and almost Halloween; the rain had been falling rather steadily for almost two weeks and today the temperature remains for now below freezing. The leaves on the trees, weakened I suppose by the atmospheric change in climate conditions that define Fall and portend Winter, have succumbed to the rain and fallen to the ground. These autumn leaves are usually described as “dying leaves,” and the blanket they provide for the balding earth as the cold rushed in are said to serve the unprotected earth. Well, I have my doubts.
            Henry David Thoreau, in his essay. “Autumnal Hints” celebrates the colors of Fall and rather than see the fallen leaves as dying refers to the changed colors as evidence of their ripening, akin to the ripening of fruit. The leaves have reached their maturity and reveal in that maturement the sum of their beauty. The essay is a paean to death, perhaps to Thoreau’s own looming demise—he suffered from consumption and died at the age of forty-four—but rather than focus on their end, Thoreau suggests that the leaves in their colorful celebration “teach us how to die.” That is, the ripening leaves will go out in blazes of color that defy their impending demise. Dying is the process of blossoming, of coming to maturity, and though traditionally characterized as pale and wan, for Thoreau death begins as a beautiful and colorful culmination. Dylan Thomas may have urged his father not to go gently into that good night, but though it may be good, death is yet dark. Thoreau suggests a different approach to mortality in “Autumnal Hints.”
            Thoreau notwithstanding, I dread the coming of winter. On my walk this morning, as the temperature hovered below 30 degrees, huddled in my winter parka, beanie cap and gloves, I where the falling leaves had left the branches bare like skeleton bones. Atop the waters that the rains had dumped on the unturned ground a very thin sheen of ice had appeared and where families of ducks had swum happily during the summer, I saw only one lone duck looking a bit lost and even lonely swimming amidst the ice water. I suppose soon he too would be gone to some place. Outside my office window the leaves fall off the trees like the drops of rain fell on the leaves.
            I weary already of the cold and the soon to be winter. Though I know that though everything appears dead, in fact the trees and creatures (except perhaps the squirrels and the mice that seek the warmth of my home) are hibernating until the weather becomes available to their awakening. Until then, however, the earth seems to me bare and colorless. I think of the final lines of James Joyce’s short story, “The Dead.” Joyce writes, “It had begun to snow again . . . The time had come for [Gabriel] to set out on his journey westward . . . the snow was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones. On the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” There seems no hope for Spring in these final words. I pull out my wool sweaters, lined jeans and flannel shirts. I’ve never been overly fond of outdoor winter sports and I never could make a good snowball. As the winter snows begin to fall this late October Fall, I settle in for the long haul. 

 

 

 

Conversation Cracks

For Fanny Assingham in Henry James’s novel The Golden Bowl, “discussion had itself to herself become a danger—such light, as from open crevices, it let in.” I am reminded of Leonard Cohen’s acknowledgement: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said something similar in his essay, “Compensation”: Emerson writes, “There is a crack in everything God has made.” In this essay Emerson suggests that since in this world perfection does not exist, everything has a price that must be paid. If everything in Nature comes at a cost, then every engagement in our lives necessitates some form of compensation. The light reveals the cost of experience and what might be returned. I think that the light reveals what must be paid: nothing occurs without consequence. Bob Dylan sings “I can tell you fancy, I can tell you plain/You give something up for everything you gain.” Cohen welcomes the crack in everything; Emerson acknowledges the crack and its price, and Dylan accepts the crack and the necessary compensation it requires: Pay for your ticket and don’t complain,” he sings. And each appreciates that through that crack comes some insight and even sometimes, wisdom, but that nothing happens without cost. Fanny Assingham, however, prefers the darkness; returning from the party where she has engaged in conversation with Charlotte and with the Prince, she huddles in the dark corner of the brougham in which she travels home. Fanny chooses to cling to the darkness and to shut out the light. Her conversations with Charlotte and the Prince had revealed to Fanny that the two have been too long left alone by their respective spouses and that an affair that might have begun in the past might now be renewing. And because by her machinations she has brought the Prince and Charlotte again together, Fanny suspects she is incriminated by her suspicions. Fanny’s conversations have exposed the crack that let the light in, but she would prefer to shut out the light. Conversation was for her a danger.
            Last evening we enjoyed a concert of Piano Trios by Franz Joseph Haydn, Maurice Ravel and Felix Mendelssohn, performed by Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano, Lisa Batiashvili, Violin and Gautier Capuçon, cello. As I listened to the music I was struck by how the composers had put the instruments in conversation and how in listening I participated in on their colloquy. Though the theater was darkened the cracks in the conversation let in some light. 
            Now, verbal conversation intends to mean and often to even mean something specific. But conversation is the crack through which the light flows. Gregory Bateson suggests that “most conversations are only about whether people are angry or something. They are busy telling each other that they are friendly—which is sometimes a lie.” We might prefer to believe in the lie and like Fanny sit in the dark corner of the brougham and refuse the light that the crack lets in.  “Statements,” says Fanny Assingham, “were too much like theories, in which one lost one’s way,” and I believe that too many questions are either judgments or statements. Now a musical conversation might present information (that my ignorance of composition does not understand), but certainly music performs an action to which response can be made or refused. In The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, Harvey Sachs recounts the story of a composer who arises from his piano having played a recent composition for a small, intimate audience. “Ah, how beautiful,” a guest comments at the conclusion of the piece, “and what does it mean?” The composer nodded his head and returned to the piano and played the piece again. Music means itself and it might inspire meaning in the listener. Jacques Barzun has said, “ . . . it is plain that the composer might use sounds to set off a particular stirring within us. But the stirring is nameless, so that if it does not accompany the words of a text and yet we want to refer to it, we have to make up some analogy.” Meaning and fulfillment depends on the listener’s attention to the conversation and the light it allows to flow in. Conversation, as Fanny recognizes, does let in the light but the listener must define the nature and consequence of that light. And the conversations in the musical trios last evening let some light flow through the cracks.
            I recalled an earlier concert program featuring Beethoven’s Violin Concerto that I had years ago attended with my daughter. She played the violin. At the time she hadn’t been all that excited about either the concert or the company—all adults— but she acceded to be my companion for the evening. We had seats in the upper balcony. The violinist whose name I do not recall was a young thin woman and she was dressed in a lovely gold full length dress. Daughter was sitting back in her chair almost expectantly but with a certain defiance. But when the concerto began and the soloist entered the conversation my daughter’s eyes opened wide and she sat up and forward in her chair into a position that did not change throughout the concerto’s three movements. I do not know through what crack the light allowed to flow in for her, but she was in those moments illuminated. And I was in those moments very happy. And the wonderful conversation I shared last evening between the piano, violin and cello somehow spoke to me of how happy I had felt at my daughter’s response at that earlier concert and reminded me what visceral happiness felt like, and though in the present I did not experience that happiness, I recalled that visionary gleam and I was happy. The conversation in the music last evening remembered that for me.
            Sometimes the conversation in a piano or organ recital takes place between the left hand and the right and between the treble and bass lines. Sometimes the simple conversation in single instrument recitals takes place simply between the music and the listener. But as the compositions grow in size then the conversation becomes more complex and occurs between instruments to which the listeners are privileged eavesdroppers. In all these instances—and more—the light enters through the crack that exists in everything. I think that what is important is to acknowledge the crack and then to see the light. That crack is the inevitable distance between . . . perhaps that is the meaning of the story above: it seemed obvious to the pianist that the listener wasn’t engaged in the conversation and therefore, the pianist sat down again and spoke.

 

The Experience of Empathy

Traditionally empathy has been defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I have my doubts regarding this explanation of empathy because I am resistant to the idea that one can ever understand the feelings of another, even if those feelings arise in response to a similar situation, say, the death of a loved one. And then, how could a person who has never experienced the death of a parent understand and share the feelings of one who has suffered such a death. Even within a nuclear family the death of any one member would affect individuals differently depending on the specific relationship each had had with the deceased. Understanding another’s feelings or certainly sharing the feelings in such cases would be problematic at best and impossible at worst. Or impossible at best and problematic at worst. Furthermore, in cases such as this and other circumstances similar and dissimilar, understanding suggests to me an active appropriation of the other by the one who asserts that they understand the feelings expressed by the one whose feelings are concerned. “I know how you feel” assumes fully the feelings and attendant context of the other as if those feelings could be packed up and transferred onto the one who claims understanding. And as for the ability to “share” the feelings of another . . . well, that seems to me to be quite impossible since the feelings to be shared of the one originally experiencing those feelings are a private matter and occur in a context that only the experiencer can know. The only sharing that might take place would be merely linguistic but then differing definitions would complicate and obviate the capacity to share feelings unless precise concurrence of definitions was realized which never actually could occur.
            Empathy is not the ability to understand and share the feelings of another but rather is the capacity to listen to the expression of those feelings. Empathy consists in active listening. And I think that this listening occurs with the posing of a question. There are two questions that I have experienced in this regard: the first I learned from Arlo Guthrie, who sang in “World Away From Me,” that upon his return home his children jumped out of bed and wondered, “Did you think of anything on down the line?” And a response to that question requires not only some active listening but a complete and complex narrative that might keep the children up late.
            And the second question that inspires empathy and which requires good listening is one I began to pose to others almost forty years ago: I would ask, “What are you reading?” Sometimes I already knew what my children were reading because I had purchased the book for them, but the question allowed for an interesting conversation about their experience with the book. Sometimes they didn’t appreciate the book as had I; sometimes they resented the question itself.  And at times I might have experienced just a tinge of jealous annoyance at a rejection of a reading I favored, yet I remained calm and listened, asking too many pointed questions to their liking but never failing to address me honestly and fully. I believe that they recognized that I was listening. In 2022 Roland Baines’s granddaughter in Ian McEwan’s novel Lessons, wonders to him “Und was liest du, Opa. And what are you reading?”  I am unashamed to say that I asked the question first.
            I think the questions “What are you reading? Or “Did you think of anything on down the line” represent the essence of empathy: I am ready to listen is explicit in the questions. And as for me, the question I have posed to others has led me often into experiences I would never have enjoyed if the question had not been asked. The question served as an entrance into a relationship and often has led me into an experience of intimacy. And I have offered to others empathy. I know that there are other questions that might do the same, but I am content with the two I have offered here. 
            And what are you reading?

            Did you think of anything down the line?