circles.

Ideas about the nature of time in a panicked person. The changing ideas of time in a person moving beyond panic into purpose.

It always ties into music for me. 

Jason Mraz’s song “Details in the Fabric.” I love the whole song, but will sit through the entire thing in anticipation of the very last lines.. 

Everything will be fine
Everything, in no time at all
Hearts will hold. 

I don’t know what Jason Mraz intended with this lyric, but my heart makes of it what it needs. Hearts will hold. It’s okay. There is time for this. For someone who feels so dependent on grace, someone who for some reason frantically feels as though peoples’ grace for me is about to run out, who often feels as though the thread of life which holds me to this earth is about to snap, it is a balm. All things are process. Things take time. Hearts will hold. Calm down, deep breaths. Everything will be fine. There is time for this. And hearts will hold. 

The first movement of Saint Saens’ Violin Concerto in b Minor opens with a nineteen-measure allegro non troppo on the G string, wailing from top to bottom of the string. It later cools into an andantino passage on the second page, which is eleven measures long. Yet even though the allegro is nearly twice as long as the andantino, the andantino takes twice as long to play. Time feels stretched and compressed between these two tempi as the music leans forward, pulls back, gallops toward the finish only to draw out to a barely-held-back crawl.

Classical sonata form demands that the opening theme circle back and reappear at the end of the first movement, but lead to a different key the second time around. So many times the lead-up to the key change is exactly the same, note for note; all it would take is one missed note – F sharp instead of F natural – and the soloist would be playing the beginning of the piece while the orchestra/accompaniment is playing the end: the same energies from two different times grappling for a single frame of air, sharps and naturals clashing against the ear like a scream.

When I was an almost comically (at least now) darkly-brooding high schooler, one particular teacher wanted me to work on a piece of music to which I couldn't automatically relate, where I’d have to reach for the emotional connections. He'd become frustrated with my lack of connection to practically anything in a major key. Don’t get stuck, like an actor who can only take on certain roles!! he'd squawk in his dusty living room. He suggested Haydn’s Violin Concerto in C Major. In one of my other classes, I was simultaneously tackling the first movement to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano. Its ebb was deep, and drawing each chord from the keys felt as though I were pressing each one forward from my own chest, and, at the time, it suited me better than the Haydn. I memorized the Beethoven in four days, on an instrument I hadn't touched since I was seven - I lapped up the rich melancholy like cream, and I never finished the Haydn; I believe I tore the pages in thirds and used it for decoupage. 

The problem with Haydn’s humor is that there’s never the remotest sense of darkness or snark or defiance. I think he lived too long, too happy, true to his nickname “Papa Haydn.” He wrote too many sonatas, trios, quartets, concertos. I prefer composers whose lives were snuffed out prematurely, like Tchaikovsky or Schubert, who made the most of too little time. Or composers whose lives were miserable to the point of desiring death, like late Beethoven or like Schumann. There is a sharper edge in my relating to composers whose troubles light the way to the eternal. I wouldn't presume to call Haydn’s music easy; it’s challenging. But emotionally, it was boring. A happy little piece, full of frustrating musical jokes I didn't understand. At least there’s a little bit of darkness in Mozart:  even Papageno, the comic figure in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, tries to hang himself. 

The nature of time, and the displacement of experience in a traumatized person, and setting things back into an order that never was. The way pain never sits still, circles around to attack you from behind. Is time ever strictly chronological in the way it’s lived? I don’t think so.

I think of music as a means of beating back time, making it expand or contract at will, making things feel longer or shorter than they actually are. My sheet music betrays my tendency to rush, is always full of handwritten slow down, breathe, hold back, linger linger linger. Haydn’s challenging music makes me feel like I've got too much emotional time on my hands, and for a person who finds difficultly when her hands lie open, a person who always feels as though the circle is about to come around full: it's just not going to work out. It's not you, Haydn; it's me. 

No.. time is never strictly chronological in the way it’s lived. Musicians know this; anyone who has ever suffered grief, loss, or a broken heart knows it too.