"In summary, all of the far-flung activities of the adult person are motivated by the energy of the life and death instincts. Anything that a person does is either (1) a direct expression of an instinct, in which case it would be a simple id object-choice like eating, sleeping, eliminating, and copulating, or (2) it is motivated by a combination of instincts, or (3) it represents a compromise between driving and resisting forces, or (4) it grows out of an ego defense."
- Calvin Hall, A Primer on Freudian Psychology
Quite a succinct summary of human behavior. What's funny to me is just a few pages prior to where I took that quote there is a passage in which the author is beginning his ascent to the previously quoted summary and he dismisses another possible explanation by saying it would't be economical and science likes economy. Whatever is true or not about the above statement, it is undoubtedly economical.
Unlike myself actually. My use of words has precedent only in the confederate states of america's printing of currency and there is I fear a similar phenomenon of inflation. In any case here I am again and tonight I am moved to speak about what is happening in Cairo.
I wish to preface my commentary with a brief but gratuitous explanation of how I heard the news of what's happened in Egypt myself. I've settled comfortably into my nocturnal summer routine and as I was laying down to sleep yesterday I found myself, as I often do, watching Morning Express with Robin Meade. It is something of a guilty pleasure because oh my god is she gorgeous but I rationalize it by telling myself it's news. Which it is...mostly.
Anyways so as I'm going to sleep I hear the military in Egypt told the President to step down or they would remove him. I wake up and they removed him. It's a fascinating occurrence because it is such a clear example of the conflict between idealism and pragmatism in democracy. Here you have a country which two years ago demanded democracy and thanks to the alliance of the military with the people were given a shot at it. A constitution is written, elections take place, a president is elected and a year passes. What appears to be a majority of Egyptians feel too little has been done in the way of creating democratic institutions and allowing for a broad spectrum of viewpoints. So they take to the streets again and again the military sides with them.
Certainly it's not a precedent you want if you are a fan of democracy. The military intervening on a bi-annual basis to assert its authority over the civilian government. However it appears that absent this action democracy would have also been endangered, perhaps more so. Our own history is filled with examples of authoritarian and anti-democratic actions on the part of our chief executive. Washington put down a rebellion between winning the revolutionary war and assuming the presidency. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus, pushed through a conscription act, an income tax not to mention the 13th-15th amendments under dubious legislative circumstances. And yet these actions undoubtedly saved democracy in our country.
So I apologize that the analysis just given is really no better than some shitty cable news show but it is interesting to contemplate and there is not much to know about it yet. What's left is to wait and see what happens.
Good Times
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Now Transmitting Directions for a Leap of Faith
"...one reason why the ego fails to develop is that too much of its energy is tied up in its defenses. This is a vicious circle. The defenses can not be given up because the ego is inadequate, and the ego remains inadequate as long as it relies upon the defenses. How can the ego break out of this cycle?"
- Calvin Hall from A Primer on Freudian Psychology
Knowledge is power they say, and it is. But it is a broad power that releases slowly over time. The conscious mind is like a large ship which turns slowly. Real change brought about by conscious will takes a massive and continuous expenditure of energy over a long period of time. When I think about this I feel simultaneously hopeful and overwhelmed.
Other powers exist though. Let me tell you for a moment about Shostakovich 7. There are an always growing number of masterpieces on my bucket list of pieces to listen to. It is comforting to me to consider the number of great works which exist on this planet which I have not yet experienced. I have purposely delayed listening to Beethoven 8 and Mahler 3 and the list goes on and on. I save them like wine in a cellar and when the occasion arrives I pop open a bottle and really listen to it. That's the thing I want to sit down and listen to something. Not listen while doing another thing but just listen. I popped open Shostakovich 7 the other night and had my first drink.
I have been particularly excited about this piece because I have heard stories about the Bernstein version with Chicago from various sources that have described it as an unbelievable performance. I remember reading a book in high school which listed it as the only true perfect performance and Bernstein himself regarded it as one of his three best recordings. So I was excited to get to know it.
It is an enormous work, roughly an hour and a half. The first movement alone is nearly a half hour. It begins with this exclamatory but sort of ordinary sounding introduction. It's almost as if it represents life before some traumatic event which when reflected back on is remembered as naive and innocent and vulnerable. This makes it hard to fully enjoy the big moments in the beginning. You feel like you're watching someone in a moment of ecstasy with the knowledge that their life is about to come crashing down on itself.
From there the first movement peels itself apart, becoming thinner and thinner until really just a single folk sounding melody remains. This melody is passed about and repeated and eventually begins to transform itself as the first dark presence of the piece is felt. There is a rhythmic stability imposed which permeates throughout the climax of the first movement and becomes at times relentless in its aiding of the agony expressed. Like an aid to the evil committed it pushes it along and props it up, gives it structure and clarity.
The totality of the agony conveyed is unapproachable by words. It is disjunct and relentless and projects a level of destruction which is difficult to absorb. While this section is not easy to talk about, it is I think the emotional heart of the piece. Everything that comes before it is leading to it and everything after an attempt to understand, heal and rebuild from it.
The remainder of the first movement again winds itself down layer by layer until only a thin texture remains. The remaining movements move through alternating stages of healing and further grief and in the triumphant moments of the final movement there even seems to be some kind of answer. With Shostakovich there is always so much beneath the surface to be considered. He was a man writing as both an artist and a survivor. He had things to say and yet was terrified to say them. He learned to conceal his true message beneath that which was necessary to keep himself and his family safe.
The power of this music is different than knowledge because it is penetrates deeply into experience. I have the sensation of being filled with it as I listen, propping me up higher and taller. It has the effect of turning the mind, conscious and unconscious, towards a new sight. It points us in a new direction or it shocks us out of an old way of thinking or it reminds us of something important, perhaps even revealing what is truly important. This is, in a limited and incomplete account, why I love music. It is a complete human experience. Two pieces have sustained me during these past few weeks of self imposed psychological demolition, Mahler 6 and Shostakovich 7. I feel immensely grateful for these courageous and talented men who were able to bottle a bit of their lives and their understanding and transmit it for the benefit of humanity. I feel a connection to these men which is strong and large and sustains me, it is a pure love. Not something which comes easy.
Good Times
- Calvin Hall from A Primer on Freudian Psychology
Knowledge is power they say, and it is. But it is a broad power that releases slowly over time. The conscious mind is like a large ship which turns slowly. Real change brought about by conscious will takes a massive and continuous expenditure of energy over a long period of time. When I think about this I feel simultaneously hopeful and overwhelmed.
Other powers exist though. Let me tell you for a moment about Shostakovich 7. There are an always growing number of masterpieces on my bucket list of pieces to listen to. It is comforting to me to consider the number of great works which exist on this planet which I have not yet experienced. I have purposely delayed listening to Beethoven 8 and Mahler 3 and the list goes on and on. I save them like wine in a cellar and when the occasion arrives I pop open a bottle and really listen to it. That's the thing I want to sit down and listen to something. Not listen while doing another thing but just listen. I popped open Shostakovich 7 the other night and had my first drink.
I have been particularly excited about this piece because I have heard stories about the Bernstein version with Chicago from various sources that have described it as an unbelievable performance. I remember reading a book in high school which listed it as the only true perfect performance and Bernstein himself regarded it as one of his three best recordings. So I was excited to get to know it.
It is an enormous work, roughly an hour and a half. The first movement alone is nearly a half hour. It begins with this exclamatory but sort of ordinary sounding introduction. It's almost as if it represents life before some traumatic event which when reflected back on is remembered as naive and innocent and vulnerable. This makes it hard to fully enjoy the big moments in the beginning. You feel like you're watching someone in a moment of ecstasy with the knowledge that their life is about to come crashing down on itself.
From there the first movement peels itself apart, becoming thinner and thinner until really just a single folk sounding melody remains. This melody is passed about and repeated and eventually begins to transform itself as the first dark presence of the piece is felt. There is a rhythmic stability imposed which permeates throughout the climax of the first movement and becomes at times relentless in its aiding of the agony expressed. Like an aid to the evil committed it pushes it along and props it up, gives it structure and clarity.
The totality of the agony conveyed is unapproachable by words. It is disjunct and relentless and projects a level of destruction which is difficult to absorb. While this section is not easy to talk about, it is I think the emotional heart of the piece. Everything that comes before it is leading to it and everything after an attempt to understand, heal and rebuild from it.
The remainder of the first movement again winds itself down layer by layer until only a thin texture remains. The remaining movements move through alternating stages of healing and further grief and in the triumphant moments of the final movement there even seems to be some kind of answer. With Shostakovich there is always so much beneath the surface to be considered. He was a man writing as both an artist and a survivor. He had things to say and yet was terrified to say them. He learned to conceal his true message beneath that which was necessary to keep himself and his family safe.
The power of this music is different than knowledge because it is penetrates deeply into experience. I have the sensation of being filled with it as I listen, propping me up higher and taller. It has the effect of turning the mind, conscious and unconscious, towards a new sight. It points us in a new direction or it shocks us out of an old way of thinking or it reminds us of something important, perhaps even revealing what is truly important. This is, in a limited and incomplete account, why I love music. It is a complete human experience. Two pieces have sustained me during these past few weeks of self imposed psychological demolition, Mahler 6 and Shostakovich 7. I feel immensely grateful for these courageous and talented men who were able to bottle a bit of their lives and their understanding and transmit it for the benefit of humanity. I feel a connection to these men which is strong and large and sustains me, it is a pure love. Not something which comes easy.
Good Times
Monday, July 1, 2013
to change or not to change
Here is the fundamental question I think for which we turn to psychology for an answer: Are humans capable of change? At some point in our lives we find ourselves baffled by the seeming incongruity of our actions with what we believe to be our desires. We choose partners that are no good for us, we engage in destructive behavior, we fail to accomplish the things we believe we want most in this world. Upon realizing these behaviors we then find ourselves engaged in the daunting task of #1 understanding them and then #2 setting out to change them.
The Dr. Phil/Asshole-Ignorant Reneck approach is to advise people to "just do it". Now I do believe there is tremendous power to the idea that our minds create reality. That we are the authors of our own reality and that the thoughts we think play a paramount role in shaping our lives. So consequently it follows that if we exercise strong determination in our thoughts we can have an important effect on our lives. The problem though is when this "just do it" approach fails to account for the various complexities and nuances of the mind and how it can come to be corrupted. When a person finds themself in real trouble in their lives, whether its addiction or self destructive behavior or mental illness or whatever, I believe what is largely happening is that their mind is in conflict with itself. One part of the mind wants one thing and another a different thing and these forces become engaged in mental violence against oneself. So to simply advise someone to lift themselves up by their own boot straps is to fail to account for the complex nature of the human mind.
For Freud he believes these conflicts are the result of clashes between either the id and the ego or the ego and the superego. For Freud the id represents sort of our animal instincts towards pleasure. Things like the desire to eat food when hungry or to feel relief from pain or to have sex when aroused. The id wants these things and when we fail to choose to act on them, the id and the ego find themselves in conflict. The ego is the driver of human decision making and thus responsible for action. The ego is sort of deputized by the id according to Freud to carry out the wishes of the id through the process of identification. The ego learns through time and experience how best to achieve the goals of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain and thus allows a person to become increasingly good at them. However the ego is also influenced by the superego which represents sort of a persons moral code, which Freud believed to be inherited form one's parents and environmental authority figures. So while the id may seek sexual gratification and the ego may recognize rape as a means of achieving that gratification, the ego is restrained by that impulse by the superego which instructs the ego of the punishment that will occur if that action is taken.
So is Freud onto something here? Is internal conflict the result of the collision of these competing forces? It doesn't feel quite sufficient to me but I am not fully able to articulate why. I know from my own experience that there are forces within me that are controlling my actions which are not conscious. I do not recognize them to be mere pain/pleasure instincts but rather they feel to me to be self destructive forces. Freud might call this the death instinct, which he purposes along with the life instinct as the two main forces of human behavior. I found it fascinating that Freud found himself contemplating the same ancient time as Robert Pirsig, another author whose thoughts have impacted me deeply, in considering the earth just before life came into being on the planet. For Pirsig the context for this exercise in imagination was a recognition of the force which propelled matter in a stable inorganic state to reconstitute itself into the chaotic and instable form of life. Specifically Pirsig cited this is an example of nature violation the second law of thermodynamics which says that all energy is winding down like a clock to a stable form, or to paraphrase all life is moving towards death. Why then, Pirsig asked, would nature in such a state of stability prior to life move against itself towards a less stable form of energy? For Pirsig the answer was Dynamic Quality which is our nature.
What's interesting is Freud sees the same process and is sort of dismissive of the phenomenon of life creation and dwells instead on the difficulty life had in coming into existence in that context of death. He said that at first it took a great amount of energy to create life and that the life which was created was very short and simple organisms. Freud postulated that the energy force creating life had to keep creating it in the beginning because the force of death would act so strongly upon it. Eventually he said, life developed the ability to create itself and evolved over time into more and more complex states allowing for much greater lengths of resistance of death. What he took from this though is that we have within us that force which wants to move towards death, towards stability and inorganic matter.
Isn't it interesting that these two great thinkers firstly stumbled upon the same thought puzzle so to speak and secondly that they came away with such different conclusions. It is reminiscent of Yin and Yang, two opposing forces, creating and destroying. Maybe that's the real source of internal human conflict. Maybe what is fighting within us is the simultaneous forces of life and death. We are at once filled with the desire to live, which for me includes things like learning, growth, joy, love, transcendence, passion, helping other people, teaching, kindness and the impulse to create, and the desire to die, which for me includes things like anger, hate, numbness, the desire to hurt others, to destroy, to disrupt and confuse. Perhaps what prevents us from resolving these conflicts is a failure to recognize the reality of the death instinct. It is so contrary to life and what we are, that maybe we repress its existence in order to avoid the pain of confronting it.
That too seems incomplete...
I know that for the past decade I felt like a mind divided and to paraphrase Lincoln in the corniest way possible, a mind divided against itself cannot stand. Perhaps this is what the buddhists talk about when they speak of the great deaths. The mind wages war against itself until one side is vanquished, and then from there rebuilding can occur. I have been afraid for sometime of the destruction that might be caused by my own mental war. I feel something difficult to explain and I'm sure it sounds crazy. I feel a sense of responsibility in ensuring my unconscious self remains under control. To borrow in part from Freud I feel like it is the responsibility of my ego as the arbiter of my decisions to not allow my unconscious to become free. I feel perhaps out of nothing more than infantile narcissism that my unconscious is powerful and dark and that it is capable of massive destruction. I also believe it may be capable one day of greatness but in its present form I am afraid of it. It seems angry to me. Like a volcano bubbling beneath the earth's surface. But I feel this responsibility to guard my own unconscious not out of fear of consequences or punishment but rather out of a love for people around me. A general love of people. One of the interesting dichotomies of my personality is that I have a genuine affection for people and a desire to help people both as individuals and in the collective, but I tend to regard human behavior quite sadly. We are all so propelled by these powerful unconscious forces that it mostly seems like we have no chance to change. Like we are outgunned by a factor of a million. But I have seen great change. I have embodied great change myself. Perhaps what is needed to unify the forces of a personality is not all that different from what is needed to unify the divided people of a country, an outside force to work against. Or maybe it's even possible to unify the mind in pursuit of something wholesome and pure, I believe that has been the case with music in my life at times.
So while I am currently in the trees and consequently unable to see the forest, the plan is to keep acting as if this change is occurring and see where it takes me.
Good Times.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Building a Fence
I began therapy last week. I've had two sessions so far, both have been superficially uneventful but beneath the surface there is a great deal of movement. It is something I am aware of physically in the shifting patterns of my eye twitch and my panic attacks and the various physical manifestations of anxiety I experience. It is something I am aware of emotionally as I have found myself near tears twice in a week and generally I feel rather out of control in regards to my emotions. Powerful feelings seem to possess me and take command of my decision making mechanism (what Freud would call the ego, I'll get to that in a moment) leaving me with an overall mix of excitement and fear. I'm excited in that these explosions of emotion represent to me a thawing out of a part of myself which has been frozen for roughly 10 years. I'm fearful for the same reason. What is coming lose within me I see as a great potentiality. It is my true self and I find myself confronted at last, after years of putting it off with the task of figuring out what the hell I really am.
What I know is that I am different. I am strange...odd, the sort of person that people are drawn to pay attention to but aren't sure if they should smile or snarl at. One thing I understand about these feelings that are returning to me is that as they were preserved so to speak, frozen they are feelings of my younger self. As I feel them I am flooded with memories of having had them, like putting on an old familiar jacket. A familiar memory that has accompanied an equally familiar feeling is the deep wish that I wasn't different. In recent years I have taken to defending weirdness, even exalting it as a virtue. And while it is true now that I do generally find "weird" people significantly more interesting than "normal" people, and while I can make an impassioned case on behalf of us weirdos everywhere by citing case after case of people who have changed the world...I still wish deeper down that I wasn't weird. It is terribly lonely and as much as you are afraid of us I assure you it is exponentially more frightening to be staring back at the room full of puzzled and concerned faces knowing they are all united by their recognition of your oddity.
As I said before on the surface the sessions have been uneventful. I have began to recount to this recent acquaintance (my therapist) the various trials and tribulations of my life. The first session focused largely on my anxiety and its hypothesized genesis, namely having been beaten by my step father for roughly 3 years. I'm sure reading that sentence is as uncomfortable for you as it is for me writing it. In recent years I have developed the tendency to sort of hit people over the head with that detail of my life as a way of shocking them away from prying to close to me. In my current state I again find myself reverting to older feelings and in this case I feel weird and burdensome for disclosing that reality, even to you the hypothetical reader. At my near core I feel a strong desire to apologize to you all for being weird, for saying things like that out loud. The second session was even less eventful on the surface of things. It began with a discussion of the previous week and included a guided meditation.
Beneath the surface though I feel tectonic shifts in my emotional awareness. I believe these shifts to be occurring not so much as a direct result of therapeutic methods but rather as a result of some dynamics intrinsic to the act of going to therapy at all. Those being #1 I have sought help. The mere act of seeking help is an enormous one for me because I fundamentally don't believe I deserve help. Another uncomfortable thought but there it is. #2 The relationship which forms between therapist and patient is built upon massive trust. The knowledge that she is legally and ethically prohibited from revealing things is helpful but of course there is a personal relationship built. It is comforting to me to know that she has standards of conduct which act as firewalls against my general propensity to destroy relationships. #3 The act of speaking things out loud to a person is in and of itself cathartic and helpful. It is not enough but it is something. I've come to believe generally in life the more we find the courage to make ourselves vulnerable the more we grow and the closer we get to some kind of lasting happiness. I am proud I have done that a bit in my first two sessions of therapy.
So having gone that far I am presently occupied with the task of building an intellectual fence. At least that's what it feels like. The fence is made of ideas and my understanding of them which will allow me to hide from anything too uncomfortable that may arise as a result of therapy. Meaning I'm coming up with ways to call bull shit on the whole field of psychoanalysis. In my hyper-analytic mind that means voraciously consuming major works in the field of psychology, researching contemporary responses, applications and criticisms of those works as well as major movements in the field. At the present I am reading a primer of the major theories of Freud. I started to read The Interpretation of Dreams a couple years ago but I found it to be laborious. Scientists always have to defend every step they take by fortifying every inch of ground they've covered by defining terms, summarizing previous studies both supportive and at odds with their view, and then mounds of evidence. I don't mind the evidence so much, particular in dream theory but it just takes so long to make a simple point. So I've started with a primer on Freud, got another on Jung in the pipeline. I've been reading Man and His Symbols by Jung for a couple weeks, pecking away here and there. I had begun this post with the intention of talking through my understanding of Freud thus far but I've filled enough of your screen with my self-indulgent bull shit for one sitting. Perhaps I'll return to Sigmund another time. I should probably start saying something half way interesting to the rest of the world out of civility to any god forsaken readers of this drabble out there.
Then again if this therapy thing maintains its current trajectory perhaps I'll also resume the writing practices of 10 years ago. In those days I believe I was capable of intellectual stimulation delivered in an entertaining manner. Then again I was probably just trying to get laid, or as Sigmund might say my id was working to achieve a release of tension in regards to the sex instinct which result in a release of psychic energy to the ego which manifested itself as my silly little ramblings, right Dr. Freud.
Good Times.
What I know is that I am different. I am strange...odd, the sort of person that people are drawn to pay attention to but aren't sure if they should smile or snarl at. One thing I understand about these feelings that are returning to me is that as they were preserved so to speak, frozen they are feelings of my younger self. As I feel them I am flooded with memories of having had them, like putting on an old familiar jacket. A familiar memory that has accompanied an equally familiar feeling is the deep wish that I wasn't different. In recent years I have taken to defending weirdness, even exalting it as a virtue. And while it is true now that I do generally find "weird" people significantly more interesting than "normal" people, and while I can make an impassioned case on behalf of us weirdos everywhere by citing case after case of people who have changed the world...I still wish deeper down that I wasn't weird. It is terribly lonely and as much as you are afraid of us I assure you it is exponentially more frightening to be staring back at the room full of puzzled and concerned faces knowing they are all united by their recognition of your oddity.
As I said before on the surface the sessions have been uneventful. I have began to recount to this recent acquaintance (my therapist) the various trials and tribulations of my life. The first session focused largely on my anxiety and its hypothesized genesis, namely having been beaten by my step father for roughly 3 years. I'm sure reading that sentence is as uncomfortable for you as it is for me writing it. In recent years I have developed the tendency to sort of hit people over the head with that detail of my life as a way of shocking them away from prying to close to me. In my current state I again find myself reverting to older feelings and in this case I feel weird and burdensome for disclosing that reality, even to you the hypothetical reader. At my near core I feel a strong desire to apologize to you all for being weird, for saying things like that out loud. The second session was even less eventful on the surface of things. It began with a discussion of the previous week and included a guided meditation.
Beneath the surface though I feel tectonic shifts in my emotional awareness. I believe these shifts to be occurring not so much as a direct result of therapeutic methods but rather as a result of some dynamics intrinsic to the act of going to therapy at all. Those being #1 I have sought help. The mere act of seeking help is an enormous one for me because I fundamentally don't believe I deserve help. Another uncomfortable thought but there it is. #2 The relationship which forms between therapist and patient is built upon massive trust. The knowledge that she is legally and ethically prohibited from revealing things is helpful but of course there is a personal relationship built. It is comforting to me to know that she has standards of conduct which act as firewalls against my general propensity to destroy relationships. #3 The act of speaking things out loud to a person is in and of itself cathartic and helpful. It is not enough but it is something. I've come to believe generally in life the more we find the courage to make ourselves vulnerable the more we grow and the closer we get to some kind of lasting happiness. I am proud I have done that a bit in my first two sessions of therapy.
So having gone that far I am presently occupied with the task of building an intellectual fence. At least that's what it feels like. The fence is made of ideas and my understanding of them which will allow me to hide from anything too uncomfortable that may arise as a result of therapy. Meaning I'm coming up with ways to call bull shit on the whole field of psychoanalysis. In my hyper-analytic mind that means voraciously consuming major works in the field of psychology, researching contemporary responses, applications and criticisms of those works as well as major movements in the field. At the present I am reading a primer of the major theories of Freud. I started to read The Interpretation of Dreams a couple years ago but I found it to be laborious. Scientists always have to defend every step they take by fortifying every inch of ground they've covered by defining terms, summarizing previous studies both supportive and at odds with their view, and then mounds of evidence. I don't mind the evidence so much, particular in dream theory but it just takes so long to make a simple point. So I've started with a primer on Freud, got another on Jung in the pipeline. I've been reading Man and His Symbols by Jung for a couple weeks, pecking away here and there. I had begun this post with the intention of talking through my understanding of Freud thus far but I've filled enough of your screen with my self-indulgent bull shit for one sitting. Perhaps I'll return to Sigmund another time. I should probably start saying something half way interesting to the rest of the world out of civility to any god forsaken readers of this drabble out there.
Then again if this therapy thing maintains its current trajectory perhaps I'll also resume the writing practices of 10 years ago. In those days I believe I was capable of intellectual stimulation delivered in an entertaining manner. Then again I was probably just trying to get laid, or as Sigmund might say my id was working to achieve a release of tension in regards to the sex instinct which result in a release of psychic energy to the ego which manifested itself as my silly little ramblings, right Dr. Freud.
Good Times.
Monday, June 10, 2013
draftback
I started this a couple weeks ago and didn't finish it. Didn't want to let it die forever in my draft folder...
My thoughts tonight have turned towards the destruction and delusion of the self. I consider this an evolution in my personal ethos born from the experience of the past several months. I think often lately about something I said in an extremely rare fit of massive over confidence; I was speaking to some friends and I blurted out with anger that I was ready to conduct professionally. I believed it at the time and in full disclosure I do experience these cycles of self confidence and self hatred which at the apex of the cycle lead me to the conclusion that I am one of the best conductors on the planet. Of course at the worst they lead me to the conclusion that my mere existence on the planet is a drag on the species and the most moral thing I could do with my life is stop living. Nonetheless the memory for me encapsulates a former version of myself which has been destroyed in the past few months.
The story as I tell it begins with the boring details of my own wallowing and bemoaning of the fact that I begged and prayed unsuccessfully for 10 years that an accomplished conductor would take an interest in me. Then suddenly beginning in mid-March of this year I had within a 3 week period of time validation from several conductors I respect highly. One of them even offered to teach me and so I made my way to him and what followed was the destruction of that previous self described previously in my memory.
This man is a marvelous musician with a powerful artistic voice which is simultaneously exhilarating, compelling, inspiring and terrifying. It makes you on the one hand want to drop to your knees and worship him while on the other hand leaves you feeling eviscerated and embarrassed. It just leaves no room for anyone else. And that's what a good conductor is supposed to do I think, to make you feel like their interpretation is the only possible correct one in the universe. What accompanied this feeling and magnified the terror aspect of it was an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft and most relevantly the score. Any score really. We talked through scores of works he was studying with his students, works he was conducting with his group, works I was planning to conduct which he had no problem reciting off hand as if he had just finished writing it. There was a breadth and depth to his knowledge that stripped my silly talent naked and then laughed at me.
But of course that way of looking at things is the problem isn't it? Rather than view it as some terrible process I should see the beauty and the purposefulness of it. Out of that destruction came a rebirth and I know that to be true. I appreciate it deeply and am grateful immensely to have experienced it. It was the first bit of genuine conducting training I've ever received and while it painfully revealed the scope of my ignorance it also left me for the first time feeling as though I know which direction to travel. What happened though is I think best described as a genuine destruction of self, or at least some part of my self. This person with confidence and a sense of being ready to conduct professionally was suddenly stopped cold and instead I became consumed with humility and awareness of the work to be done.
Then I saw a video of a man speaking about the fundamental human delusion being that of the self. Really I think he may have been speaking more about the narcissistic self which elevates our own fears, priorities, desires, opinions and values above all others.
My thoughts tonight have turned towards the destruction and delusion of the self. I consider this an evolution in my personal ethos born from the experience of the past several months. I think often lately about something I said in an extremely rare fit of massive over confidence; I was speaking to some friends and I blurted out with anger that I was ready to conduct professionally. I believed it at the time and in full disclosure I do experience these cycles of self confidence and self hatred which at the apex of the cycle lead me to the conclusion that I am one of the best conductors on the planet. Of course at the worst they lead me to the conclusion that my mere existence on the planet is a drag on the species and the most moral thing I could do with my life is stop living. Nonetheless the memory for me encapsulates a former version of myself which has been destroyed in the past few months.
The story as I tell it begins with the boring details of my own wallowing and bemoaning of the fact that I begged and prayed unsuccessfully for 10 years that an accomplished conductor would take an interest in me. Then suddenly beginning in mid-March of this year I had within a 3 week period of time validation from several conductors I respect highly. One of them even offered to teach me and so I made my way to him and what followed was the destruction of that previous self described previously in my memory.
This man is a marvelous musician with a powerful artistic voice which is simultaneously exhilarating, compelling, inspiring and terrifying. It makes you on the one hand want to drop to your knees and worship him while on the other hand leaves you feeling eviscerated and embarrassed. It just leaves no room for anyone else. And that's what a good conductor is supposed to do I think, to make you feel like their interpretation is the only possible correct one in the universe. What accompanied this feeling and magnified the terror aspect of it was an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft and most relevantly the score. Any score really. We talked through scores of works he was studying with his students, works he was conducting with his group, works I was planning to conduct which he had no problem reciting off hand as if he had just finished writing it. There was a breadth and depth to his knowledge that stripped my silly talent naked and then laughed at me.
But of course that way of looking at things is the problem isn't it? Rather than view it as some terrible process I should see the beauty and the purposefulness of it. Out of that destruction came a rebirth and I know that to be true. I appreciate it deeply and am grateful immensely to have experienced it. It was the first bit of genuine conducting training I've ever received and while it painfully revealed the scope of my ignorance it also left me for the first time feeling as though I know which direction to travel. What happened though is I think best described as a genuine destruction of self, or at least some part of my self. This person with confidence and a sense of being ready to conduct professionally was suddenly stopped cold and instead I became consumed with humility and awareness of the work to be done.
Then I saw a video of a man speaking about the fundamental human delusion being that of the self. Really I think he may have been speaking more about the narcissistic self which elevates our own fears, priorities, desires, opinions and values above all others.
letting my conscious mind tire itself out...
Some very rough thoughts emerging from reading Carl Jung's "Man and His Symbols".
1. The starting point for consciousness is that it became necessary to ensure that we are not overloaded with information. We select the important information for conscious thought and the rest remains in the unconscious. This is an evolutionary adaptation and it is a new phenomenon. Jung describes it almost like it's a beta version of the newest software. He says it's buggy and prone to malfunction. It's new and we're still getting used to it.
2. A friend was describing a computer hard drive he bought recently which is separated into two sections. One section is a higher quality storage system which is less prone to problems and the other is a more standard hard drive with moving parts that can break. The hard drive adapts to user patterns over time and stores the most commonly accessed information in the safer higher quality portion of the hard drive in order to protect it. This seems to me to be a crude form of consciousness. The machine is processing the information and the sorting it based on importance, as determined by usage.
3. When a composer writes a great piece of music they connect with something powerful in the unconscious. When a conductor conducts a great piece greatly they connect with that same powerful force in the unconscious. Therefore it seems possible to transmit and communicate the unconscious directly. What remains is a mystery is whether all the performers of a piece are connecting to the same unconscious force and the implications of that idea. Very confusing for me to think about at this point.
4. Is it that I believe my unconscious is smaller and less powerful than others or is it that I'm afraid to find out? Is there even a such thing as "my" unconscious or is it all the same thing? If it's just one big unconscious then the concept of universal identity doesn't seem so far fetched does it. If you strip the self away are we all the same consciousness and therefore all the same being, like cells making tissue or tissue making organs? Do cells and tissue and organs have consciousness then? Is that what the buddhists mean when they say the buddha resides everywhere?
1. The starting point for consciousness is that it became necessary to ensure that we are not overloaded with information. We select the important information for conscious thought and the rest remains in the unconscious. This is an evolutionary adaptation and it is a new phenomenon. Jung describes it almost like it's a beta version of the newest software. He says it's buggy and prone to malfunction. It's new and we're still getting used to it.
2. A friend was describing a computer hard drive he bought recently which is separated into two sections. One section is a higher quality storage system which is less prone to problems and the other is a more standard hard drive with moving parts that can break. The hard drive adapts to user patterns over time and stores the most commonly accessed information in the safer higher quality portion of the hard drive in order to protect it. This seems to me to be a crude form of consciousness. The machine is processing the information and the sorting it based on importance, as determined by usage.
3. When a composer writes a great piece of music they connect with something powerful in the unconscious. When a conductor conducts a great piece greatly they connect with that same powerful force in the unconscious. Therefore it seems possible to transmit and communicate the unconscious directly. What remains is a mystery is whether all the performers of a piece are connecting to the same unconscious force and the implications of that idea. Very confusing for me to think about at this point.
4. Is it that I believe my unconscious is smaller and less powerful than others or is it that I'm afraid to find out? Is there even a such thing as "my" unconscious or is it all the same thing? If it's just one big unconscious then the concept of universal identity doesn't seem so far fetched does it. If you strip the self away are we all the same consciousness and therefore all the same being, like cells making tissue or tissue making organs? Do cells and tissue and organs have consciousness then? Is that what the buddhists mean when they say the buddha resides everywhere?
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Dr. Laura
So if you have not seen the show In Treatment my god are you missing out. HBO canceled it after 3 seasons because it didn't get very good ratings but it is one of the best things I've ever seen in my life. It is about a therapist named Paul and in the first season you pick up with him as he's just taken on 4 new patients (Alex, Sophie, and a couple that comes to therapy together Jake and Amy) and a year into therapy with a patient named Laura. Paul is a remarkable man, brilliant and perceptive and a great practitioner of awareness. He is insightful and cares deeply for his patients. His marriage however is falling apart and the first seasons (what I've seen so far at least) revolves around the destruction of his marriage, the corresponding difficulty in treating his patient Laura who is herself brilliant and has fallen in love with Paul, and Paul's attempt to sort it all out in his own therapy with Gina, a former supervisor with whom he has a complicated past. The show it absolutely genius and touches on so many universal themes that it positively captivates me.
One thought that has stuck with me is how deeply mindful and aware both Paul and Gina are in their sessions. The perceptiveness is so high, they are keenly aware of everything the patient does and try to expose the meaning and significance in every minute action, universally to the annoyance of the patients. On the one hand this is impressive and admirable and I see this behavior in Paul and Gina as admirable. On the other hand I find it interesting that their awareness if always confined to express itself as analysis. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the great tradition of western thinkers has been successful at enlightenment when it has been because of its practice of deep awareness and has fallen short it when has because of it's limited engagement with the present in its narrow focus on rational thought and analysis.
Furthermore as a hyper-analytical thinker myself I was moved deeply by the scene which I have transcribed below. Here Laura and Paul are talking and Laura is absolutely refusing to concede that her feelings for Paul are anything less than real and powerful and important. She is an amazing character. Unbelievably intelligent and persistent and emotionally confident and damaged and beautiful. It's better to see the episode for yourself and the actors are unbelievable, which adds several dimensions of beauty to the art but the transcript itself I think still contains sufficient thought provoking and moving substance so as to warrant consumption:
.........
Laura: I know that as a therapist you tell yourself that it's part of therapy to find out why I'm in love with you and how that's linked to my past and all that. But isn't that always the way it works Paul? Doesn't our past always determine who we fall in love with? So what if you can trace it back to the withholding mother, the narcissistic father, the parent who's missing in action, does that make our love any less real?
Paul: But sometimes circumstances are, let's say, less than ideal...
L:I know that. I know you can delude yourself into a thing. Only I am not deluded. Not about you. Not about how I feel about you. Why I feel it, there's always gonna be an explanation but that I feel it is irrefutable. I don't know how to convince you anymore Paul... I mean you think that I've idealized you, that I've convinced myself of some fairy tale, that I've idolized you. You think this is a case of a miserable patient sitting in front of her therapist imagining that you're my superman...perfect, savior, mentor, I don't see you that way at all.
P:How do you really see me?
L:I see you the way you are. Your imperfections. You're not at ease with your body, with your profession, with who you've become. I don't know much about your life, but I imagine you're not happy at home. Something in you is restless, damaged, there is a yearning there and I know it when I see it. And I want you just the way you are. Damaged and restless. Yearning, warts and all.
P:So you can fix me.
L:God you can be such a fucking prick when you wanna be you know that...
P:(interrupting) So I can fix you then?
L:(long pause) You know um, next month I'll be thirty. And I've been thinking to myself, I've hated myself for thirty years. It's enough I don't want to anymore.
P:Why do you hate yourself?
L:You're surprised?
P: I've never heard you say it before.
L:Well I guess you save the best for last.
P:That's the best Laura? That you hate yourself?
L:I don't know Paul, I don't know. You're surprised? It's something people realize about me after an hour.
P:I didn't realize it after an hour. I didn't know it after a year. It's not easy for me to hear you say that.
L:Maybe you should try to find out why it's so hard for you. Maybe you should see someone.
P:Yea, been thinking about that. Seriously um I think the reason it's hard for me to hear it is because I know that you have so many reasons to love yourself. So many things to be really proud of yet you choose to ignore them why?
L:Haven't you ever hated yourself?
P:Yea. I guess I did. Once. When I was a kid, my mother she was in pretty bad shape and I took care of her. But uh I couldn't, I couldn't save her from herself you know. I guess I hated myself for that.
L:Was she sick?
P:She was in a difficult emotional state. I thought that I could pull her out of it. I used to cook her all these elaborate meals. She wouldn't eat them. I couldn't understand it. Like every kid I thought it was my fault. I thought it was something I had done, something I hadn't done. Maybe I could do something else.
L:But you know that's not true.
P:I know that now, yes.
L:Have you forgiven yourself.
P:I think so. It took a long time.
L:How does that feel? I mean, really I'm curious.
P:It feels like a relief to tell you the truth.To know that that burden is gone. The burden of blame. And to know deep down, that it never belonged there in the first place.
L:Hmm. Maybe that's why you became a psychologist. To help others with their burdens.
P:Yea. Maybe.
L:So you're a product of your past too. (long pause). So uh (smiling) will that be cash or check?
One thought that has stuck with me is how deeply mindful and aware both Paul and Gina are in their sessions. The perceptiveness is so high, they are keenly aware of everything the patient does and try to expose the meaning and significance in every minute action, universally to the annoyance of the patients. On the one hand this is impressive and admirable and I see this behavior in Paul and Gina as admirable. On the other hand I find it interesting that their awareness if always confined to express itself as analysis. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the great tradition of western thinkers has been successful at enlightenment when it has been because of its practice of deep awareness and has fallen short it when has because of it's limited engagement with the present in its narrow focus on rational thought and analysis.
Furthermore as a hyper-analytical thinker myself I was moved deeply by the scene which I have transcribed below. Here Laura and Paul are talking and Laura is absolutely refusing to concede that her feelings for Paul are anything less than real and powerful and important. She is an amazing character. Unbelievably intelligent and persistent and emotionally confident and damaged and beautiful. It's better to see the episode for yourself and the actors are unbelievable, which adds several dimensions of beauty to the art but the transcript itself I think still contains sufficient thought provoking and moving substance so as to warrant consumption:
.........
Laura: I know that as a therapist you tell yourself that it's part of therapy to find out why I'm in love with you and how that's linked to my past and all that. But isn't that always the way it works Paul? Doesn't our past always determine who we fall in love with? So what if you can trace it back to the withholding mother, the narcissistic father, the parent who's missing in action, does that make our love any less real?
Paul: But sometimes circumstances are, let's say, less than ideal...
L:I know that. I know you can delude yourself into a thing. Only I am not deluded. Not about you. Not about how I feel about you. Why I feel it, there's always gonna be an explanation but that I feel it is irrefutable. I don't know how to convince you anymore Paul... I mean you think that I've idealized you, that I've convinced myself of some fairy tale, that I've idolized you. You think this is a case of a miserable patient sitting in front of her therapist imagining that you're my superman...perfect, savior, mentor, I don't see you that way at all.
P:How do you really see me?
L:I see you the way you are. Your imperfections. You're not at ease with your body, with your profession, with who you've become. I don't know much about your life, but I imagine you're not happy at home. Something in you is restless, damaged, there is a yearning there and I know it when I see it. And I want you just the way you are. Damaged and restless. Yearning, warts and all.
P:So you can fix me.
L:God you can be such a fucking prick when you wanna be you know that...
P:(interrupting) So I can fix you then?
L:(long pause) You know um, next month I'll be thirty. And I've been thinking to myself, I've hated myself for thirty years. It's enough I don't want to anymore.
P:Why do you hate yourself?
L:You're surprised?
P: I've never heard you say it before.
L:Well I guess you save the best for last.
P:That's the best Laura? That you hate yourself?
L:I don't know Paul, I don't know. You're surprised? It's something people realize about me after an hour.
P:I didn't realize it after an hour. I didn't know it after a year. It's not easy for me to hear you say that.
L:Maybe you should try to find out why it's so hard for you. Maybe you should see someone.
P:Yea, been thinking about that. Seriously um I think the reason it's hard for me to hear it is because I know that you have so many reasons to love yourself. So many things to be really proud of yet you choose to ignore them why?
L:Haven't you ever hated yourself?
P:Yea. I guess I did. Once. When I was a kid, my mother she was in pretty bad shape and I took care of her. But uh I couldn't, I couldn't save her from herself you know. I guess I hated myself for that.
L:Was she sick?
P:She was in a difficult emotional state. I thought that I could pull her out of it. I used to cook her all these elaborate meals. She wouldn't eat them. I couldn't understand it. Like every kid I thought it was my fault. I thought it was something I had done, something I hadn't done. Maybe I could do something else.
L:But you know that's not true.
P:I know that now, yes.
L:Have you forgiven yourself.
P:I think so. It took a long time.
L:How does that feel? I mean, really I'm curious.
P:It feels like a relief to tell you the truth.To know that that burden is gone. The burden of blame. And to know deep down, that it never belonged there in the first place.
L:Hmm. Maybe that's why you became a psychologist. To help others with their burdens.
P:Yea. Maybe.
L:So you're a product of your past too. (long pause). So uh (smiling) will that be cash or check?
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