Music can be evocative. Last night while preparing dinner we listened to Verdi's La Traviata (the 1955 recording performed with Maria Callas at La Scala). Every time I hear this opera, especially toward the end, I imagine a particular time, place, and memory.
Several years ago in grad school I took a course taught by a visiting German artist. He was very interested in the concept of a first house-- more a primordial and subconscious dwelling that an actual house. He had us perform several exercises, including drawing what we imagined our childhood homes to be. I did not remember my own home at all, but rather the neighbors who lived in stilt homes down the hill (this was in the Philippines). It was a wonderful and strange experience to suddenly realize that I, an architect, did not know what my own home looked like. The neighbors' homes were so much more interesting and I longed to be offered entry atop of the stilts.
One of the other exercises involved bringing a piece of music to share and then describing what we associated with the music. This exercise was met with mixed results; some students brought music that was moving to them and some brought music clearly chosen because they imagined it to be something that would impress others. I think this was actually a good exercise to indicate our various personalities and insecurities. As this wore on, I became increasingly irritated at the level of pretension and chose not to air my piece of music. I have to also admit that I felt that I had chosen my music very hastily, without thinking through all the consequences on if it was elite enough, and therefore did not feel up to talking about it. Thankfully the class ended before it was my turn and I made a hasty exit.
Later that day I checked my email and found a note from the instructor offering to have the students who did not share in class come over to his home and play the music. I decided to suck it up and play for him my insignificant choice. So there I was, in the visiting faculty house, playing the intro to Jeff Buckley's Mojo Pin. He asked me what I was was thinking when the song played, and I answered, "floating." Then he asked me why. I was unprepared for that. Even worse, I had no idea what was coming out of my mouth when I suddenly told him, "it feels like drowning." It is very strange how your subconscious works. At that moment I realized that I had picked the song for its familiarity, not because it was such good music, but because the feeling it evoked in me was the strange feeling of languor and weightlessness that I experienced when I was nine years old and almost drowned. To tell the story briefly, I was at a beach and was swept into the tide. Even as a nine year old I was a strong swimmer and struggled mightily with the subsequent crashing waves as I tried to go back to shore. As I was struggling, I hit something and realized that instead of going up, I had swum to the ocean floor. I remember putting my arm out in disbelief and touching sand. Then I was slowly spinning around down there and at some point ran out of energy and just lay there, floating about. I certainly did not want to drown, but now that it was happening, I was too tired to care. Luckily my decision to stop fighting was what saved me in the end and I made it back up.
So there I was, pouring it all out to this stranger, a story that I had never shared with anyone since the day it happened. He decided to give back and share his music. He played for me La Traviata, specifically the last bit when Callas sang Se una pudica vergine (in this scene Violetta is saying goodbye when she suddenly feels a surge of energy, and sings of feeling reborn only to fall dead.) He explained that when he heard it he thought about looking through his camera at the scene unfolding before him, and it reminded him of his role as an observer, powerless to stop life from unfolding. When I heard this music for the first time, I clearly saw the Rothko Chapel.
If you are in Houston, you must visit the Menil Collections. You must see the main collection housed in a jewel by Renzo Piano, you must see the Cy Twombly Gallery (also enshrined beautifully by Piano), you must see the tasteful housing for the Byzantine Fresco Chapel done by François de Menil, and you must visit the Rothko Chapel. When I visited the collection I was a perfectly ignorant undergrad who knew very little of contemporary art, much less Mark Rothko. I entered the chapel after reading on the wall about how it was an intimate, contemplative, and nondenominational space. True to its description, the chapel was quiet and bathed in serene light as several people meditated or just sat and enjoyed the space. Then my gaze turned to the fourteen murals on the wall of the chapel, darkened to almost black. I was overcome with an awareness that something was wrong. Something was very wrong. In the dark beauty of the painting was something far more disturbing and heart wrenching. It made me want to shout out for everyone to stop, to just stop because something was wrong with the world and everyone was blind. I later found out that Rothko has killed himself after finishing the paintings.
So that is what Se una pudica vergine feels like. It is beauty and fragility and despair. It is a loss of something that was fleeting to begin with, but with a memory that lasts far beyond the experience.
Several years ago in grad school I took a course taught by a visiting German artist. He was very interested in the concept of a first house-- more a primordial and subconscious dwelling that an actual house. He had us perform several exercises, including drawing what we imagined our childhood homes to be. I did not remember my own home at all, but rather the neighbors who lived in stilt homes down the hill (this was in the Philippines). It was a wonderful and strange experience to suddenly realize that I, an architect, did not know what my own home looked like. The neighbors' homes were so much more interesting and I longed to be offered entry atop of the stilts.
One of the other exercises involved bringing a piece of music to share and then describing what we associated with the music. This exercise was met with mixed results; some students brought music that was moving to them and some brought music clearly chosen because they imagined it to be something that would impress others. I think this was actually a good exercise to indicate our various personalities and insecurities. As this wore on, I became increasingly irritated at the level of pretension and chose not to air my piece of music. I have to also admit that I felt that I had chosen my music very hastily, without thinking through all the consequences on if it was elite enough, and therefore did not feel up to talking about it. Thankfully the class ended before it was my turn and I made a hasty exit.
Later that day I checked my email and found a note from the instructor offering to have the students who did not share in class come over to his home and play the music. I decided to suck it up and play for him my insignificant choice. So there I was, in the visiting faculty house, playing the intro to Jeff Buckley's Mojo Pin. He asked me what I was was thinking when the song played, and I answered, "floating." Then he asked me why. I was unprepared for that. Even worse, I had no idea what was coming out of my mouth when I suddenly told him, "it feels like drowning." It is very strange how your subconscious works. At that moment I realized that I had picked the song for its familiarity, not because it was such good music, but because the feeling it evoked in me was the strange feeling of languor and weightlessness that I experienced when I was nine years old and almost drowned. To tell the story briefly, I was at a beach and was swept into the tide. Even as a nine year old I was a strong swimmer and struggled mightily with the subsequent crashing waves as I tried to go back to shore. As I was struggling, I hit something and realized that instead of going up, I had swum to the ocean floor. I remember putting my arm out in disbelief and touching sand. Then I was slowly spinning around down there and at some point ran out of energy and just lay there, floating about. I certainly did not want to drown, but now that it was happening, I was too tired to care. Luckily my decision to stop fighting was what saved me in the end and I made it back up.
So there I was, pouring it all out to this stranger, a story that I had never shared with anyone since the day it happened. He decided to give back and share his music. He played for me La Traviata, specifically the last bit when Callas sang Se una pudica vergine (in this scene Violetta is saying goodbye when she suddenly feels a surge of energy, and sings of feeling reborn only to fall dead.) He explained that when he heard it he thought about looking through his camera at the scene unfolding before him, and it reminded him of his role as an observer, powerless to stop life from unfolding. When I heard this music for the first time, I clearly saw the Rothko Chapel.
If you are in Houston, you must visit the Menil Collections. You must see the main collection housed in a jewel by Renzo Piano, you must see the Cy Twombly Gallery (also enshrined beautifully by Piano), you must see the tasteful housing for the Byzantine Fresco Chapel done by François de Menil, and you must visit the Rothko Chapel. When I visited the collection I was a perfectly ignorant undergrad who knew very little of contemporary art, much less Mark Rothko. I entered the chapel after reading on the wall about how it was an intimate, contemplative, and nondenominational space. True to its description, the chapel was quiet and bathed in serene light as several people meditated or just sat and enjoyed the space. Then my gaze turned to the fourteen murals on the wall of the chapel, darkened to almost black. I was overcome with an awareness that something was wrong. Something was very wrong. In the dark beauty of the painting was something far more disturbing and heart wrenching. It made me want to shout out for everyone to stop, to just stop because something was wrong with the world and everyone was blind. I later found out that Rothko has killed himself after finishing the paintings.
So that is what Se una pudica vergine feels like. It is beauty and fragility and despair. It is a loss of something that was fleeting to begin with, but with a memory that lasts far beyond the experience.
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