Op. 27, No. 2
Sunday, Nov. 12, 2006 - 18:56

It's no secret that Beethoven makes me weird, it's no secret that going home makes me weird. Pensive, you know.

Fur Elise, I can play it with my eyes closed. I've never been able to figure anything out about what's going on behind that - nothing, if you ask me. It's lovely and can be quite fun to play.

But oh the Moonlight Sonata. Do you know the second and third movements? Beethoven cleverly hid the emotion and fury in the first movement by saying it should be played delicately and quietly, and then following it with the second movement, so happy and light and respectable. But the third movement is maniacal and no innocent safe piece of music would have that as its third movement.

I can't even bear to listen to other people play the Moonlight Sonata. People don't play it angrily enough. And it is angry, it's pissed off, the goddamn heartache that's in that first movement is palpable. Slow, quiet - how can anyone stand to play it like that?

Because Beethoven, first of all - his living was music, it was his entire life - and he started losing his hearing in his 20s. Like a painter going blind, like a sculptor getting their hands chopped off, like a dancer whose feet fall off. His hearing. What is this, some joke, some joke from God?

Terrible father, bad ears, and then he was unsuccessful in love. And if you've read anything I've written over the last year and a half, or if you've read my paper journal over the last few years (and you better not have, psychostalker), heartache is the worst, man, it's the biggest. It's stupid but that's the way it is. It's human, I suppose.

Beethoven was falling in love with women but they weren't falling in love with him and finally eventually you get to the point - maybe it's because of one person - where you're like WHY THE FUCK NOT goddamnit WHY NOT, is this the rest of my fucking life? Never? Never? Why not?

You get pissed, angry, at the person, at God, the Fates, yourself, and you play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata and all of this is in there, the rage and fury and questioning and tears and heartache. But then there's the acceptance and I always had a hard time playing that. Acceptance? Why? How? Acceptance, no, because acceptance to me was giving up and I would not give up.

You know that saying, if you love someone set them free. Years later you learn to accept that, years later you realize it's true. Years later you realize that you can only go as far as you can go, and if the other person won't meet you there, if they don't meet you in the middle, ain't nothing you can do about it. And it takes you through most of the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata to work through that. You can only do what you can do. And so. There's still bursts of anger, but basically, there's the acceptance. And the first movement ends. And so.

And so, life goes on, and the second movement starts and you put on a happy face for the world and you put your energies into other things. Jogging, maybe. Starving yourself, maybe. Wikipedia, maybe. Music, maybe. Maniacal third movements, maybe. Presto agitato, you're barely hanging onto sanity. But there's nothing you can do.

And so. Masochism, perhaps, makes me play Beethoven, because I know what it does to me. Masochism, perhaps, makes me do a lot of things.