Listening to Brahms
takes me to the good of childhood
when I longed to create art,
remembering days when I could dream freely.
I didn’t tell anyone about my dreams,
so no one laughed at me.
Now, I declare I still understand Brahms.
He speaks to me and I feel it in a deep zone.
But now I know
all I can do is spectate,
unable to communicate what’s inside.
I shiver in joy with the understatement
and simplicity of Brahms,
and the understatement of unequaled power.
I’d like to smoke cigars with Brahms
at the street café.
I’d plead for him to tell me
all he knows about music and life.
The end of the first Symphony,
much like the end of the second.
I lose myself.
I want to be lost forever.
stillfugue 
#1 by carldagostino on April 12, 2011 - 6:52 am
You are allowed to be lost in space and time with this music guy or yours from time to time. But if you lose yourself forever you cannot return to anything, even hymn(pun accidental, but fitting as I reread)
#2 by Carl on April 12, 2011 - 7:08 am
You are right, Carl. Lost forever would mean clean white sheets, belts and bars on the windows. Maybe I just want to feel okay forever. 🙂
#3 by screen_scribbla on April 12, 2011 - 5:02 pm
I often wonder if it is not the recognition of the kinship in similar struggles that allows us to trust ourselves to get lost in another’s work. I think for me it certainly is.
#4 by Carl on April 12, 2011 - 8:40 pm
Yes, I believe you are absolutely right, and some artists have an ability to communicate the deeply universal things, thus the appeal is more broad.
#5 by LetterzToNoOne on April 13, 2011 - 12:11 am
“The end of the first Symphony,
much like the end of the second.
I lose myself.
I want to be lost forever.”
I know what this feels like.
#6 by Carl on April 13, 2011 - 8:58 pm
Thank you so much for your comment. It’s nice when people can identify.
#7 by Val Erde on April 13, 2011 - 6:49 am
When I was a small child my dad used to sit me down in front of his gramaphone (that dates me!) and play me Brahms, Smetana, Beethoven’s violin concertos, and much more and I felt like you did… and then later came the depression and self doubt, like you too. When did your depressions begin, Carl?
Music is a salve, it really is.
#8 by Carl on April 13, 2011 - 9:09 pm
I love it – Being sat down in front of the gramaphone!
I had my first cycles in my teen years undiagnosed, went to heavy drinking for 20+ years, numbing my sense of anything going on, and for the last almost 7 years in sobriety have had very short cycles of 2 or 3 weeks until the past year which has been spent in the entirety in a bad cycle. I would like it to be the last one since it decided to last so long.
Music has always been a primary spiritual resource. It helps me go.
#9 by ebbtide on April 13, 2011 - 2:54 pm
For me, it’s Beethoven. But I can see losing oneself in Brahms as well. 🙂
But I’ve considered this. And if I one day, am on my deathbed, and am coherent, and can perhaps choose the moment of my death, I would be listening to that 4th movement of Beethoven’s 9th, and losing myself in it – literally.
#10 by Carl on April 13, 2011 - 9:21 pm
Oh, yes! Beethoven works fine for getting lost! There are many others too, thankfully. If you were listening to the later part of the 4th movement of the 9th, you would not have much choice but to be going to heaven of some sort. Thank you for reading and commenting.
#11 by carldagostino on April 13, 2011 - 9:29 pm
Write about other things. I would like to read them. Writing about the bad cycle is expression and autobiographical but if you write about a child’s delight with a merry-go-round, for example, it reinforces the beautiful and positive. I know when I wrote about D it kept me there. I had to switch focus to get drawn out of the cycle. Sometimes I think writing about D all the time is a self imposed anti liberation mechanism. Then we spiral down to focus on the other D (the permanent one)and that’s dangerous. Of course you have every right to tell me to stuff it. I am not your or anyone else’s manager. But through you dozen or so things I’ve read and from our recovery experience I know a great deal about you. You gotta shake it off, Carl . We create our own darkness or our own light. Pour some light out of that pen of yours. I read your inspirational quotes . Read them again yourself. I hope you will accept my comment in the spirit of concern and kindness in which it is offered.
#12 by Carl on April 13, 2011 - 9:57 pm
Carl, I understand the thoughts you are expressing, and I do appreciate the positive reason for your comment. The quotes I’ve picked that you reference are ones that I use to counteract the way I feel upon awakening. I desperately want the good that those reflect.
The writing is therapeutic for me and it is often an outlet that helps me feel better. I know that might not make sense – that writing about bad would help one feel better but it is true. Also, I don’t like being negative. I’d love to be positive, but my writing is tied to seeking understanding of how to get through the things many of us live through, so it is necessarily autobiographical. It is confessional. If cognitive solutions such as writing about positive situations were helpful at all, believe me that the counselor I work with would have had me better by now. We are fighting a biological disease, not a cognitive one.
The best I can do is to be honest about what my life is now. It won’t be beneficial for me to hide from that or to disguise it or cover it up.
Again, I understand your thoughts and they are especially valuable when there is a cognitive problem. When I am alone and meditating or praying, I am always reinforcing whatever positive I can grab on to.