There isn’t a huge amount of joy in my life. I’ve never had a wife or girlfriend. Never had a child. Never had a pet. I’m not the religious sort: I’m a half-assed agnostic, not even ready for the cold comfort of atheism. And I’m not a sports fan, ready to celebrate when my team wins the championship! (Of course, if I were a Toronto Maple Leafs fan I wouldn’t get to do much celebrating anyway…) I earned a Ph.D., but by time I passed the final examination I felt like a burnout. I suppose I’m like my parents, who I never saw kiss each other. After your parents pass on, you may notice how similar you are to them.
There’s a psychological condition called “anhedonia,” where you can’t feel joy. It’s one of those neuroses that’s associated with Jewish people. (Maybe it’s just that Jews are more likely to get their neuroses diagnosed.) Jewish comedian Woody Allen’s original title for Annie Hall was Anhedonia!
On the other hand, my life hasn’t had much sorrow either. My parents are no longer with us, but they lived to their nineties, like Elizabeth II, and you can’t ask to survive much longer than that. I’ve had four brothers and sisters, and they’re all still here. Since I’ve never had a pet, I’ve never had to experience losing one. And I’ve never experienced the death of a particularly close friend. I was hospitalized for ulcers twice in my youth, but since then I’ve stayed out. I’ve never been in jail. I didn’t have to quit college and work in a factory because I ran out of tuition money. I’ve never had to fight in a war. I’ve never been exiled or fired or gone bankrupt or lost my home or been a slave or a fugitive or a refugee.
I suppose I find some joy in learning. In The Once and Future King, Merlin told young Arthur, “Whenever you feel down about life, learn something new. That always helps!” And I find joy in friendship too. If you asked me “What’s the biggest achievement in your life?” I’d probably say “Making friends.” That means a lot to me because I didn’t make many friends in my youth. I just don’t experience joy in that overwhelming way that makes you traipse in the fields and act silly, and I guess most people don’t, at least not here in Canada. (Sicilians might be different…)
The Nazi Storm Troopers’ motto was “Strength through joy.” I’ve been thinking about what that meant. If you take up a single idea like fascism and make yourself blind to everything else, I guess that can give you joy, and even some strength in the short term. But keeping yourself blind is hard work for most people…
The subject of joy brings to mind the Ode to Joy in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Which brings to mind the movie Immortal Beloved. It’s a 1990s biopic built around a real-life mystery: Beethoven wrote a surviving letter to a woman he called his “immortal beloved,” but who was she? In some ways the movie’s pretty crass: it has the sort of script where Ludwig Van is going to meet his sweetheart at an inn, but she’s late and eventually he has to leave before she arrives, so he writes her a note and trusts the maid to deliver it to her. The woman arrives, but instead of telling her of the note the maid just tucks it into her breakfast plate and trusts her to notice it, but the woman feels sick and doesn’t touch her breakfast so the note goes unread, and her failure to read it is central to the whole story! So you have a plot that depends on one maid’s carelessness…. In addition, there’s a scene where one of the women gets assaulted by soldiers that seems to have been thrown in for gangsta appeal! And I didn’t have a hard time guessing which of the women would turn out to be the IB.
But it is a pretty handsome production. Bernard Rose is a talented, flamboyant director with a nice visual touch. (My sister loved Ivan XTC, his movie of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilich that moves the setting to today’s Los Angeles.) Gary Oldman rather overplays the role of Beethoven, but he’s an actor who’s fun to watch even when he overacts. Especially when he overacts, to tell the truth. (Watch him chew the scenery as the crooked drug cop in the tasteless but enjoyable movie The Professional!) And there’s a great moment near the end when Ludwig Van is putting on his Ninth Symphony and remembering his childhood when his father beat him and he fled into the night and swam in a lake and felt at one with the universe as the Ode to Joy plays and it all somehow comes together. I guess you had to be there.
No comments:
Post a Comment