In the mood

     Like many people in The Arts (capitalized, naturally), I have bi-polar disorder.   Yes, me and Catherine Zeta-Jones.    Some people affected by this are stigmatized by ignorant people who either overreact or dismiss it, so often sufferers keep it hidden, from a real fear of mistreatment.   But public education is heightening awareness of this and thus, aiding responses.   Zeta-Jones should be commended.    Public perception is everything in Hollywood.   If a producer thinks she might hold up production even one day, they will most likely not use her.   Luckily, medicine helps me—others with the disorder are not so lucky.    But I am anything but “cured”.   I still experience symptoms, both elevated and depressed.  Due to this, though, I examine my emotional responses more than most people without it.    It is easy to overreact when I’ve done or said something unintentionally that may have bothered someone—and they let me know it in a blunt or cutting way.   This can make life a bit difficult, but who doesn’t have problems?    I’ve grown to live with it.    And it has its benefits.    When I experience a truly wonderful performance, or play, or piece of music, of work of art, I can feel it deeply.   That adrenaline rush can make even low emotions rise.    And I believe this helps me perform.    I think I can communicate emotions rather well since I am so aware of them.    Sometimes.   Let us not sugar coat things.   Some days, nothing gives relief.   But it passes, as long as I take my medicine, which I will take for the rest of my life.    This is a serious life-altering problem.   If you think you are experiencing some extreme emotional changes, seek help.   Go here to find out more information: http://www.webmd.com/bipolar-disorder/default.htm.    And see a doctor.    Please.    The sooner the better.   Symptoms can grow extreme without treatment.    For the people who love you, if not for yourself.

            But with all this self-reflection, I have come to ask myself some interesting questions involving my reactions to artistic experiences (and other’s as well.)   So often people watching, listening to, or looking at a work declare they do not like it, with the caveat “maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood.”   How often is this really true?    I’ve said it myself, but I mean it.   Really.   I rarely just drop the matter.  When I think that, I try to revisit it later to prove my hypothesis.    Was I truly in the wrong mood?    Sometimes, I truly was.    And the opposite can also be true: sometimes I’m in such a great mood, a piece can seem better than it probably is—using my own personal scale, naturally.   One man or woman’s masterpiece is another’s misfire.   [Which leads me to repeat one of my basic tenets of taste.  Only morons think there are intrinsic values that everyone shares.    No, Mozart’s works are not necessarily better than Britten’s .    Their music has very little in common.    I adore both of them.   Avocados and pears have pits.    Is one intrinsically better than the other?    Frankly, Mozart’s music is less complex—if you use that as a criteria, Britten is a better musician(!)    And nothing Verdi wrote remotely suggests he could write something on the scale of Berg’s Lulu, which proves neither one’s superiority nor inferiority.   And I’ve only mentioned operas.    The same goes for all the arts.    Time to get rid of the prejudices.    And to all who will continue to make the comparisons and find everyone other than the same “standard” artists wanting: maybe you’re just too lazy or too ignorant or even, maybe, you’re just too stupid to get what other artists are doing…ever thought of that?   At least one New York Times reviewer I’d like to say that to, because he seems to be a little of all of three.]

            So, my mood almost always dictates my reaction: but not just the first hearing, sometimes the second or fourth.    And many things I have heard, watched, seen more times than that.    This is where I find things get interesting.    In a sentimental mood, I just can’t make my way through a Elliott Carter piece.     His music isn’t sentimental.    It’s brilliant, and often wonderful (I am a big fan of his piano concerto and his vocal piece A Mirror On Which To Dwell) but requires different needs.    When I am in a clear-headed, probing mind-set, I can follow him to some far out places and get much excitement from the journey.    Usually, I love Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, truly love it, but not always.    Sometimes it just seems too overly familiar and perhaps a bit dull.    I can listen to the same performance a month later and feel completely different about it.    How many listener’s out there are feeling the same?     No one I know ever says that (s)he never appreciated, say, Birtwistle’s Punch and Judy until heard the second (or, gasp! the third) time.    But I know people who can listen to the same few pieces by Bach over and over and never be bored.   (I have to ask…How?)   

And what about those people who seem to dismiss anything not immediately ingratiating as useless, since “life is too short to listen to bad (useless, dull, ugly, complicated, ‘atonal’, modern, strange, new) things.”   Are they actually trying to like these new works?    Do they take into consideration their true feelings before they experienced them?     Do they also mean it when they say “maybe I was just in the wrong mood”?    Do they go back to give it a second chance?  Don’t get me wrong: if I think a work is “junk”, it is usually “junk” when (or if) I hear it again.    Lloyd Webber’s Cats is not Stravinky’s Requiem Canticles.    (And, yes, I did give Cats another hearing.   I’ve seen it.    It is utter junk.    I just needed to know a little more music before I could appreciate the Stravinsky.)

Well, life isn’t that short.    And ingratiating is overrated.    Cover your ears if your squeemish, but what the fuck does “ingratiating” even mean?     Every piece and composer I have mentioned so far can be ingratiating heard in the right way.   Yes, even Birtwistle.    “People listen to what they know” doesn’t explain it all.    I think mind-frame is a more accurate determiner.    Case in point: an audience consisting mostly of older opera fans watched a 90 minute German piece written in odd atonal beauties mixed with violent musical ‘attacks’ for lack of a better word.    The people in this audience were probably the same people who go to see Le Nozze di Figaro.   But they came ready to hear what they could get from it.    And the place was silent but for a couple of coughs.    (And I do mean a couple.)    The piece was Henze’s Phaedra.    The loud ovation at the end was genuine.    I was one of them—quite moved by its strange sonorities.    I have a recording off the radio, so I was somewhat familiar with it, but the first listen, I did not come away with much.    A second time, I was enraptured by it, and the third (the live performance) I was sure I was experiencing a masterpiece.    But had I gone on my first impression, I would most likely have stayed at home.    By the same token, the first time I heard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town, I thought it a gem.   But further listens have always left me somewhat cold.    It has its pleasures, still.   But as a whole?    I think I was just in a really good mood, so anything with some skill and some wit seemed brilliant.     Sometimes, being happy can just give you the wrong impression.    But I’ll keep listening ever so often.    Just in case, it was just my mood.