Chopin

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Journal Notes

The Man From Porlock

June 7, 2023 & making arrangements for my knee surgery. And I am hoping that is the last thing that I will remember.

I believe that everyone has a breaking point. Those who survive just haven’t met it yet. [I am not speaking of myself here. I’m not personally close to any sort of breaking point.]

When I am depression drunk and self-pitying I know the selected reality of things. What that means is that I hold onto the things that are true and meant to be the rocks that fill the backpack I carry or cause the heart-chest to be painful. I touch myself there without thought but feel nothing. That is strange of itself because I swear my heart actually hurts at times.

I thought we were a unit during the earlier days, that it was us together, my son and daughter and me. It was only much later that I learned that wasn’t true and I had been mistaken all those years.

I just heard a woman on TV say that heartache doesn’t last forever.  

When my second ex-husband was a foreman at a car factory in Flint, Michigan, there was a killing on the factory floor. It involved drugs and passion and betrayal. Her lover or husband or secondary lover stabbed her 27 times. That’s a lot of anger, or desperation. The foreman went down to the floor and held her in his arms so that she would not die alone on that cold-cement factory floor. He also told the shift people to go home. He did not know what else to do but it was the wrong thing. The police said he had to get them all back as they were witnesses. The police then kept him there for hours, and until enough people confirmed what had happened. The confusion was due to all of the blood that was on the floor. And on him.

I wonder how many people from their families—the black man who did the stabbing, and the black woman who had 27 stab wounds but didn’t die alone on the factory floor—I wonder if they have gotten on to the part where their hearts no longer ache.

June 17, 2023 It’s a Saturday here in Broadview Heights, OH, sunny and lovely at 720

And Zeus has fixed himself in front of the patio door.

More on words I don’t like and will never use: eponymous. It’s one of those words that I have to translate to meaning every time I read it. It is never automatic, always requires thought. (You’ll never hear anyone use it in conversation, at least in the circles wherein I travel.)

June 20, 2023 Nearer to the knee surgery. July 11. The rent is paid as well as the charge cards. I feel a success.

It occurs to me that I don’t recall Glenn Gould ever playing Chopin. I wonder why. Did he consider him a light weight as some do? And yet he (Chopin) developed the use of the whole keyboard as no other player had before him. I looked it up and Gould is quoted as saying Chopin was “probably the greatest composer for the piano” even if his music did not have much appeal to him. Gould also refused to play Schumann and Liszt, considering them undeserving of their fame; of Mozart, Gould said that the Austrian composer “died too late”, judging his late work not so much worth of praise. Yet I know that Gould played a great deal of Mozart even though he considered him “repetitive.” And he is.

June 27, 2023 Just from my recall and responses I wish I had given. I don’t know why but I just thought of this last night. Apropos of nothing:

Me:  John and I are going to get married!

Mo:  Well I want to wish you good luck because you are certainly going to need it.

Me: I guess that means you’re a no for the ceremony. A maybe on the reception?

Should there be room here for a picture now? I don’t know, why not! Below a photo of Philip Glass. I wonder what Glenn Gould would have thought of him? Posted by History of Music.

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George Sand Again

As of late there seems to be a renewed interest in one of my patron saints, George Sand. So it is time to pay more attention to her. As far as I am aware, George never felt she was a man, and she certainly—in her ever active sex life—never claimed to be interested in other women as partners. She did however, believe that men should not receive greater privileges than women. And they certainly should not be deferred to. And she just plain enjoyed dressing as a man, so why not? Why not indeed.

“Is it a man, a woman
Is it an angel, a demon?
I am the complete being
I exist by myself alone
And have resolved the problem
Of Plato’s androgynes.”

Verses by Etienne de Jouy addressed to George Sand

Portrait of George Sand, which hangs at Chawton House, Jean-Baptiste, 1847

Born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, the French author George Sand (1804-1876) was one of the most popular writers in Europe in her lifetime, with her novels outselling Victor Hugo’s works in England in the 1830s and 1840s.

George is most popularly known as the lover of Chopin. And there was a group (ha! Groupies well before the 1980s) that gathered together, not the least of whom included: Bertie—Bertrand Russell, Franz Liszt, and of course, Chopin himself. It was not a Salon as such. These greats gathered together to play music, read poetry, and discuss ideas.

Chopin and George were together for some time until they were estranged by the interference of George’s daughter who wove herself into their marriage of minds. Solange became a point of disruption to George and Frederic so much so that George left him just two years before his death. She did not attend his funeral.

Many women in Europe wore men’s clothing in public at that time in the 19th century. So much so that a law was passed stating that women could dress as men, but only with permission. George refused to get a permit to dress as she liked. She championed the poor and the working class. She stood for women’s rights and all injustice and inequality.

George was a full and complete person of many talents and expressions. These comments only scratch the surface. There is much more to read of her time here on earth. It is well said that we owe her respect and admiration.

Once upon a time I wanted to change my name to George but felt I could not as both my dad and my brother had the first name of George. I still think it would be fun.