With all the cat pictures lately I haven’t mentioned I’ve been on what can only be described as a knitting frenzy–in the last 10 days, I’ve finished legwarmers, a hat, half a mitten, and about seven inches of my vest. Needless to say, my hands were stiff Monday while I was typing at work. But after eight hours of typing about Microsoft I desperately wanted something soothing and intelligent to do. My hands said, “No knitting!” and then I remembered the Goldberg Variations. I remembered how much I love Bach. And I remembered this passage from An Equal Music, which I read in college only once.
This passage ends the book; it’s thought by the narrator as he watches his (married)beloved perform a recital of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue: “Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music–not too much, or the soul could not sustain it–from time to time.”
(By the way, I had copied that passage into an old journal sometime between May 7th and 16th, 2003, when I was moving. And if anyone thinks catching up on reading my blog lately makes them want to “go on antidepressants“–well, try searching through four years of journals to find a passage that asks, “why hope not to grieve?”. That’s all I’m saying.)