Play It Again Sam

Music has always been one of the most emotive forces in my life, especially classical music. I began listening to Baroque music after my oldest brother bought a CD with Bach, Pachelbel, Vivaldi and the like - I think he wanted mood music to play in the car for a big date. But regardless, he was the cool, older brother in high school, and what he did, I did. So I checked it out. Somehow, certain pieces got into me enough to cause interest, even though I found most of the tracks entirely too boring. Harpsichords - I don't think so.

Shortly thereafter my brother graduated from high school and I was left without any classical influence at home. So like any middle schooler without a good influence, I experimented. I tried out all sorts of exotic and tempting composers: Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff - even those sensuous Impressionists. I was lost forever to the temptations of the Romantic era and beyond.

Obviously, this wasn't quite a tragedy, and I remember with fondness my middle school and high school musical discoveries. But among all the variety, one composer, and one piece, clearly towered above the rest: Rachmaninoff and his second Piano Concerto. I listened to this powerful piece over and over one winter in middle school; its melancholy melodies are forever molded together with the overcast skies of that season. To this day, when I hear any portion of that beautiful creation, I am transported back to my bedroom where I would sit and stare out the window upon the gray skies and listen. I could never listen too much because the emotion was intensely mournful, though somehow pleasing. At the end of many other pieces, the listener feels a sense of completion and is ready to move on to the next moment in time, but Rachmaninoff always left me feeling slightly unfulfilled, as if he beckoned for me to return at some later date to relive the whole experience just one more time. And I kept coming back, not because I wanted to catch a glimpse of completion, but because I knew this sense of incompletion in mourning was proper to our existence. I could not have placed the feeling at the time, but it resonated deep within me - unfinished work is profoundly human.

Whether or not musicologists would agree with me, death and mourning seem to be wrapped up in the essence of Russian music. In fact, all of Russian society seems to reflect that connection: alcoholism is rampant, violence and corruption are mainstays, and the arts simply interpret this fog over Russian life. The brutal winters probably do not help the mood in Moscow and St Petersburg either. But in a way, the harsh setting has allowed some of their great artists like Rachmaninoff to present a kind of prophetic vision of life near death. And this is why their music can be so powerful.

It is human nature that when someone is nearing death, he begins to realize that often what he has striven for is fruitless and what is worthwhile he has left unfinished. Who among us, dear reader, has not witnessed personally or heard witness of a relative on his death bed telling posterity to love their family and spend time with them, to come home early from the office to play ball with the kids, to keep the lower paying job in place of the more lucrative one that demands working nights and weekends? Everything is put in its proper place when the trappings of this life no longer matter, when the Rolls Royce and the Saturn are both sitting in the hospital parking lot side by side, empty. And I have never known a more poignant representation of this reality than in Rachmaninoff. It does not matter what came before the end because you want more regardless. But it's over - there is no more. This feeling of emptiness, of unfinished finality everlasting that I heard in Rachmaninoff was ruthless like the Russian winter.

No wonder I can still recreate the mournful skies out my window and the feeling of solitude in my bedroom as I replayed the tracks. What the Russian great had captured in his music was a feeling built into humanity; I was simply encountering it early and I didn't know how to escape it.

Obviously, I am still with you to this day and I have not suffered irreparable damage from my first real encounter with the prospect of my life's end. We all face it at some point, often more than once before we return to the dust. But my perspective has changed since my younger years. Now when I hear Rachmaninoff, I can remember what it thrust before me in yesteryear and remain unmoved. There is something more, dear reader. We are not meant to live as if we could never finish; when we come to the end, we do not have to leave begging for another playback.

Among my generation, thoughts of death seem to be few and far between. Occasionally an elderly relative will pass away or a tragic accident will end the life of a peer, but after a short period, death recedes, along with all of its troubling issues. To be frank, we often forsake those things we know to be most valuable because there are no ubiquitous reminders. Everything tells us to push the difficult issues to the side and face them only when you must. But then, when face them we must, we are too often unready.

Life at its best is joyful, and we should strive to live joyful lives, but we all need reminders about what lies ahead. Rachmaninoff was the first of many such reminders that caused me to reevaluate what I value most. These reminders can come in many forms, and heed them we must. For there are many questions of import in this life that we all must face, and as I learned in middle school, procrastinating never makes them easier.