Some readers may recall that I had a serious mountain bike crash last summer and suffered a spinal cord injury. Something interesting has happened after my injury and during the 11 months of rehabilitation. Music provides a medium in which life experiences are stored, perhaps with more power than any other mechanism. My deep love for music has not diminished, but I listen less often. Perhaps the emotions connected to music are more than I’m ready to experience now.
Chopin Nocturnes, absorbed at age 5 beneath my mother’s piano, carry more emotional power than any other memories of those early years. The opening chords of a Bach Prelude played at my father’s memorial service will forever evoke unbidden tears.
It is not just Chopin or Bach that carry memories, for the saccharine theme from the saccharine movie Love Story also calls up lovely images and feelings from early in my marriage that may be otherwise inaccessible.
Memories are not selective and can be appended to some pretty dreadful songs. I can, for example, still respond viscerally to 96 Tears by Question Mark and the Mysterians, a horrid drone with two loud organ chords and banal lyrics. My response is because of the drama of late adolescence, not the quality of the music.
I must clarify what might be construed as a false equivalence. Both 96 Tears and a Bach Cantata can elicit emotions, but not in the same way. There are qualitative distinctions that matter. For most people, the life experiences soldered to music are situational.
I can still visualize the scene under the lights at my first evening dance in the summer before seventh grade, listening to Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White. Daydream Believer by the Monkees was on the radio in 1967 when I drove into Hinesville, Ga., to begin my year of Army service at Fort Stewart. In 1970, my wife and I ate dinner on our ironing board and drank Gallo burgundy from a gallon jug as we listened to Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel.
But these and many more pairings of music and life are not comparable to the timeless impact of classical music. While a few things, like the Chopin Nocturnes of my sixth year and the Bach Prelude of my grieving, are attached to specific events, most of the powerful beauty of Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and others is attached to something deeper — perhaps eternal.
I am aware that this may seem pretentious, but I write to observe it, not explain it.
Since my injury, it’s as though a poignancy looms that I’m not ready for. It’s not that I can’t ever allow myself to feel it, but it demands a level of emotional engagement that I have limited capacity to expend. So I pick and choose the times. With Bach or Schubert, for example, I can’t listen casually. I’d rather not listen at all than listen halfheartedly. It is as though my life is embedded in music — or the other way around — and revisiting is an increasingly serious and sometimes draining experience.
I observed this with my mother too, perhaps related to her insidious dementia, but perhaps not. During her late 70s and 80s, music and a cat were her daily companions. They sat together every evening listening to music as my mother invariably drank a bit (or a lot) too much. Then I sensed a gradual change.
On a visit when she was 91 or 92, I was eager for her to hear a video performance of Chopin’s E Minor Piano Concerto, played by my brilliant young (15 at the time) pianist friend, Tiffany Poon, who had just won a Young Artist competition in Moscow. She became visibly irritated when she heard the opening orchestral measures. “I don’t want to hear that!” I sensed that the memories it prompted were too complex, too powerful, and she could not bear to engage with them.
In 2019, my brother-in-law died. He and my sister shared a love of music for their more than 50 years together. It was months later that she wrote to me that she had finally been able to listen to Beethoven Piano Sonatas again.
My father-in-law loved recordings by John McDermott, especially the old classics, We’ll Meet Again and I’ll Be Seeing You (in all the old familiar places). When he was in his last days, in 2004, confined to a hospital bed, my wife brought tape recordings to the hospital, thinking the songs would give him comfort. He was unable — unwilling — to listen. It was just too much.
The music in our lives is inevitably tied to things we lose. Some don’t matter much, like a first dance to Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, but some are unbearable, like Beethoven in the wake of a lost love or I’ll Be Seeing You when you know you will never Meet Again.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.