A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

30 August 1998 - Timbre and Pop-psych

Timbre

One thing I am really mystified about is just why the timbre of a musical instrument has such a profound emotional impact. I went to a concert entirely of double bass music and was struck by the range that much maligned instrument is capable of - but it still wouldn't be my first choice for frothy romance. Why do bagpipes sound so evocative and mournful, while fiddles are light-hearted? I have a renewed appreciation of the challenges of orchestration. (Along the same lines, I have now heard a Stradivarius being played. I am blessed.)

I bring this up because the thing that always gets me about movies is how the characters could figure out what was going to happen if only they could hear the soundtrack that we hear. So I started contemplating what the soundtrack of my life would be like right now. And it has too many saxophones. And not enough oboes and violins. Saxes aren't particularly sinister or depressing, but they are moody.

Or maybe I am just saying this because Robert used to play the sax. It would be good for him to go back to it, to go back to taking something seriously again besides work. I am going to see him Friday after all this time and, frankly, I am nervous as hell about it. We are already managing to snipe at each other in email. (Here's a nice bassoon solo.)

Damn it! Where are my oboes?

Pop-psych

I finally read M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled, a work of pop-psych that I know everyone else in the known universe read 20 years ago, but I always am behind on this sort of popular reading. (What prompted reading it was a discussion I'd had with John, which is another symptom of limerence, but let's not get into that right now.) Anyway, I had more or less the same reaction that I do to most works of pop-psych, which is to conclude that I am both healthier and sicker than I usually think I am. And to think that most of what he says is so bloody obvious that I can't help but marvel that people have bought so many copies. (To be fair, it may be obvious because the book has been a best-seller for so many years and his concepts have entered the mainstream culture.)

The one thing that did hit home, though, had to do with people not taking time. I think a lot of my fear and panic reactions come about when I feel rushed and that, if I stop to compose myself, I can get myself past them. But my tendency is to want things to happen fast so I end up getting frustrated and panicky when I'm not instantly brilliant at something.

What to do about this - and some of it definitely comes from being an inherently fast-paced person - is another matter. It took me a long time to figure out that the reason my life is generally so packed with doing things is that , even though I sometimes get stressed out at the pace of things, I fundamentally like that sort of treadmill. Oh, well, I suppose just being aware of this as an issue is a good thing.