This is just a random thought I wrote and I'd rather not lose and thought I might as well hide it here. It started as a formspring question and then snowballed into this.
Q: What was the best concert you went to?
A: Music for Prague 1968.
When I was in high school our Symphonic Winds played a piece called Music for Prague 1968.
It was a musical narrative of the spring of 1968 when a new national government swept into Prague and began instituting changes like allowing freedom of the press and freedom speech and a possibility for multiparty government. The leaders of the USSR feared this democratization so they started talks with the government of Czechoslovakia. When talks broke down the USSR and three other nations decided to invade with more than 200,000 troops. The results were bloody and brutal.
The music is designed to reflect the events in very literal ways. Oboes play Morse code. Trombones are meant to be air sirens. The entire third movement is nothing but percussion. In the music you can hear the chaos of the invasion.
Woven into Music for Prague 1968 is a melody of a folk song that is traditionally symbolic of resistance and hope. In the movement describing the chaos of battle and the brutality of the USSR invasion the folk melody is played on the timpani almost as a song of mourning.
It made me cry in a way nothing else had ever made me cry. It was a deep and inexplicable pain that made no sense so I tried to stop the tears and move on.
We all left the concert hall and as I was driving home I ended up in the wrong lane and had to exit and merge on to the highway. I was finally alone in my car and I had to pull over on to the shoulder of the freeway and put on my emergency lights because I was crying so hard I couldn't see or breathe and I didn't know why. The thought of people being shot as they tried to help people, of people being killed for wanting to be free made me physically hurt inside.
That was the first time I ever understood what a really well written and well performed piece of music can do.
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Precious in the sight of the Lord
I went to check my facebook and for the first time in what feels like years I saw a photo of my grandmother in hospice. She's smiling and holding her sister's face, saying goodbye.
It's strange but I can't really explain how much it hurts to remember she's gone.
In my eyes she's the greatest feminist that has ever lived and I miss her.
Both my parents were victims of abuse and very much had a sense of victim mentality about them. They did their best but when I was verbally and psychologically abused by a teacher they didn't really know how to deal with me. One of the only examples in my life of someone who refused to be a victim, someone who was alway strong, was my grandmother.
When she was 17 she was told that because of problems with her reproductive system she would be unable to have children. She had four.
After a medical procedure she was told she couldn't finish high school because her school in El Paso had stairs and she couldn't use them. She transferred to Las Cruces Union High School and supported herself as a switchboard operator and lived in a boarding house.
After raising her four children she decided she wanted to become a nurse and did it. She went on to work as a nurse at Memorial Medical Center for years.
She spent much of her life traveling and didn't stop after turning 70. She spent a few summers working in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks holding her own the whole time.
She lived in her own home taking care of herself right up to 6 months before she passed. She was incapacitated by Wegener's Granulomatosis, an auto-immune disease whose treatment would have killed her faster than the disease. But even to the last she called the shots, she chose to end dialysis in June of 2007.
I was the only person in the room when she passed and those moments holding her hand are still the most important in my life. Still the hardest goodbye of all.
I suppose the most difficult part is trying to relate to someone else why someone is so important to you, why you can't let this one go. I'll be honest; it hurts less over time but the pain associated with the memories always lingers.
Seeing that photo of her hurt a lot more than I expected it to. It doesn't help that it's Easter Weekend.
Happy Easter, Wink. I still miss you.
It's strange but I can't really explain how much it hurts to remember she's gone.
In my eyes she's the greatest feminist that has ever lived and I miss her.
Both my parents were victims of abuse and very much had a sense of victim mentality about them. They did their best but when I was verbally and psychologically abused by a teacher they didn't really know how to deal with me. One of the only examples in my life of someone who refused to be a victim, someone who was alway strong, was my grandmother.
When she was 17 she was told that because of problems with her reproductive system she would be unable to have children. She had four.
After a medical procedure she was told she couldn't finish high school because her school in El Paso had stairs and she couldn't use them. She transferred to Las Cruces Union High School and supported herself as a switchboard operator and lived in a boarding house.
After raising her four children she decided she wanted to become a nurse and did it. She went on to work as a nurse at Memorial Medical Center for years.
She spent much of her life traveling and didn't stop after turning 70. She spent a few summers working in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks holding her own the whole time.
She lived in her own home taking care of herself right up to 6 months before she passed. She was incapacitated by Wegener's Granulomatosis, an auto-immune disease whose treatment would have killed her faster than the disease. But even to the last she called the shots, she chose to end dialysis in June of 2007.
I was the only person in the room when she passed and those moments holding her hand are still the most important in my life. Still the hardest goodbye of all.
I suppose the most difficult part is trying to relate to someone else why someone is so important to you, why you can't let this one go. I'll be honest; it hurts less over time but the pain associated with the memories always lingers.
Seeing that photo of her hurt a lot more than I expected it to. It doesn't help that it's Easter Weekend.
Happy Easter, Wink. I still miss you.
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