Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The memory of music

Masonic funeral music by Mozart

Before I say anything you have to hear the music. I heard it for the first time almost a decade ago and I heard it over and over again. I wrote many terrible and sad poems listening to these six minutes and I cried many a tears. I cried not because I was unhappy but because the music made me feel like I was dying. It was like a dagger through my heart every time I heard it. And then I didn't hear it for many years. Sometimes I looked for it especially when I felt like crying but the tears would not come. I rarely tried to look for it all these years and then somehow today I searched for it and I found it and my eyes welled up even though there is absolutely nothing to be sad about. This song evokes the image of death, of the grim reaper, the most feared card in the tarot, the number thirteen.
I'm still too young to think about dying but I do sometimes think about the many forms which death takes even when you're physically alive. Ideas die, ways of life die, sometimes love dies. It's not that I'm being morbid but to me it's important to grieve over the things that have died, things that have reached their end, things that define a finality which we cannot change however much we may want to. This music is that grief. I cannot hear it over and over again like I once used to. I do not have that strength of heart I did once  to withstand pain. Some of you might say that this is just a piece of music, some instruments being played together to create sound. It's so much more. So much more.

2 comments:

Sunil Deepak said...

Very deeply felt!

Reading it reminded me of a song by an Italian singer called Tiziano Ferro. In one of his songs "sere nere" (black evenings) he talks about his broken heart - I don't need to hear the words, just the sound of his voice is like a "dagger in my heart"! :)

Parul Gahlot said...

I will surely find the song and listen to it Mama. Thank you so much for coming to my blog :)