I remember reading decades ago a passage in some book where the author claimed that in response to the traumatic news of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., he went to his piano and started playing Bach. He explained there was something spiritual in Bach\u2019s solo keyboard music which offered him profound solace in moments of sadness and loss.
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That anecdote stayed with me for some reason. A few moments of reading many years ago struck a chord. It resonates to this day.
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I get it.
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I remember finding a used copy of the full Well Tempered Clavier, Book I while rummaging through the bargain bin of compact disks back when I was 22-years old. I listened to it almost non-stop for months. Then I got Keith Jarrett\u2019s Book II. I liked it and listened to Book Ii even more than the Book I.
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A good chunk of my twenties and early thirties was spent listening to such music. Hour after hour after hour. I would spend an entire Saturday morning and afternoon enraptured..
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Then I got seriously into my career. Next, I got married and had two daughters. I never stopped listening to classical music, and one of the major reasons I married my wife is that she too knows and loves classical music. Our first date together was at Royce Hall at UCLA<\/a> listening to Hillary Hahn play a Mozart violin concerto; Our second date was at the beautiful Clark Library<\/a> listening to some ugly music by Max Bruch. But that was courtship. Later Maria and I became so busy in building our adult lives together that there was little time for ourselves. We were oriented towards engaging the outside world of work and the needs of babies and then small children. Buying a house and starting a family. It was a demanding time of life. We were almost always busy, if not overwhelmed. Perhaps this is best shown back in 2011 when I taught multiple demanding Advanced Placement high school classes in my day job, had a three-year old and a newborn baby at home, a wife who also had a full-time teaching job, and I also had a second job teaching grad school classes at night. Whew! I get tired just thinking about it. Had I been too busy to attune my ear \u2014 or my soul? \u2014 to the quiet interiority of J.S.Bach? Was the hurlyburly of the workaday world a sort of violence against my sense of inner peace? Did I lose a semblance of self? Happily, I am in a different stage of life now. And I can make a conscious decision to make a corrective choice to live a slower, more deliberate and introspective lifestyle. For example, last night I sat on the couch alone and listened to 49 minutes of the 1:49:00 of Bach Well Tempered Clavier, Book I<\/a>. It took my full concentration, but then I ran out of time. Maybe in a day or two I can listen to the full almost two hours. I can find the free time. Or I can make the time available. There is always time when something is important. To be quiet. To move inward in meditation and stillness. To refuse to lose oneself to the hive mind of communal gossip, constant worry, incessant conflict \u2014 backbiting and persiflage \u2014 social media, news updates, and collective anxiety \u2014 Americans glued to their phones reading about Donald Trump or the COVID-19 virus. That shit will work it\u2019s way out one way or another. Time to tend to my inner life. And my wife and two daughters. And get some solid reading and writing done, and some quality tennis matches and hikes in the hills. Family time. And personal time. Listen to The French<\/a> and English Suites<\/a>. The whole Anna Magdalena Notebook<\/a>.
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