I had open heart surgery in 2011. Two days later my heart stopped. In the weeks that followed, while my body healed, my psyche fell into a deep depression. It seems this happens a lot after such invasions. For the next six months I watched TV for days on end, or slept in my office, pretending to work.
Eventually I got better. The Remeron helped, as did my wife Jean, a physician. But she said afterward she was surprised she hadn’t heard me listen to music that entire time. Not once.
This was a huge shock to hear. I love music the way a Swiftie loves Ms. Swift. I was raised on classical music. It’s always playing in the background of my day, including now on my computer as I write about how we don’t seem to use the tools that are just sitting there for us to pick up and help ourselves. We don’t do what the world and our own experience tell us will make us less sad, even more happy.
Such lethargy is baked into what depression is.
I thought of this on Tuesday when Jean and I watched Beethoven’s Nine: Ode to Humanity, Larry Weinstein’s documentary about the enduring power of one piece of music on the 200th anniversary of its composition. In 1824, Beethoven was not only deaf, he was in such pain that he could barely compose anything at all.
One of the nine parts of Weinstein’s film happens on Christmas Day in 1989. The Berlin Wall had just fallen and Leonard Bernstein was conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Beethoven’s 9th. In the Ode to Joy, whose melody is known and hummed the world over, it’s clear that Bernstein is in great pain. He would die six months later from mesothelioma.
In another part, Ukranian-Canadian conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson puts together an orchestra in Poland made up of Ukrainian musicians to play Beethoven’s 9th, following Russia’s invasion 1,000 days ago this week. And in still another part, on October 7 last year, Larry Weinstein’s sister is kidnapped and killed on the kibbutz where she and her husband lived in Israel. Shock, grief, and helplessness all overwhelm Weinstein as he makes this film about the power of music to create joy and elevate humanity.
Beethoven, Bernstein, Weinstein and Wilson. They were all sad and afraid.
A lot of us are sad and afraid for what the new year will bring. The rockets’ red glare could be aimed at us. But we’ve been told forever that art has the power to heal, and that if there’s a crack in everything, music is how the light gets in.
But let’s do that before we get depressed.
Let’s reach for our tools of resilience while we’re merely sad, so that if chaos does come knocking, at least we have a bit of practice in enduring it. Maybe it will even help us prevail over it.
You can watch all of Beethoven’s Nine here, courtesy of TVO. And all of Leonard Bernstein’s Berlin Celebration Concert as well.
Meanwhile…
1. Learn by Numbers. The bigger the bad news, the more we need to absorb it in bite-sizes. Here are 10 tips for reporting in an autocracy, and 20 lessons from the 20th century on how to survive Trump’s America. But of course you can always absent yourself from the problem for four years.
2. Fake it till you re-make it. There’s no worse crime in science than faking your data, or worse, your results. But cheating is booming. In 1997, 44 science journals retracted papers because their authors had faked the data. By 2016, nearly 500 articles were retracted, and last year, it rose to 10,000. This month’s Walrus has a searing piece on a Canadian scientist who conned his colleagues and nearly got away with it.
You can keep track of these ‘mistakes’ via Retraction Watch, which has a handy guide to “red flags”, including one on Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 2005 article on the alleged link between autism and vaccines.
3. Technology is our friend. Don’t get phone-scammed. Get even. Plus hand-held x-rays. And a robot everyone will need.
4. Ending it all. The view from 96. Retire at 30. Put me out of my misery. Get it the first time. And speaking of life after death, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony died last year and was resurrected by its own musicians.
5. Killing Kittens. The British sex party planner is about to go public. As The Financial Times reported: “Killing Kittens…is raising funds for a global expansion and…new services such as a permanent venue, cruise ship tours, and a gay male venture.” This outlier of the female-empowerment movement has already rolled out a dating app called WAX, and is backed by the British Government through its Future Fund.
6. See you there I hope. Here are two events worth going to: one for your brain, one for the rest of you. The Ontario Brain Institute is holding a free public online talk on “Optimizing the Adult Brain” this coming Monday, Nov. 25 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
Opera-singer Lucia Cesaroni is hosting Sips & Serenades, an evening of fine wine and fine singing next Thursday, Nov. 28 from 7 p.m. Traditional it’s not.
7. Tips for a happier life. How to be polite when you write. How to people-please appropriately. How to write one song. How to shoot a movie in one take. How to diagnose a sick man. How to do practical betterments. How to de-age under water.
8. Exercise in a pill. Can a drug mimic the effects of exercise? Danish scientists have developed a ‘mimetic’ called LaKe that replicates the health benefits of strenuous exercise without requiring physical activity. So now you can lose weight and get in shape just by exercising your mouth.
A Toronto doctor is bringing street people inside because living on the street is a killer.
9. Two big British scandals. The first involves the British Bernie Madoff. Michael Thomson, former CEO of LC&F, was found guilty last week of running Britain’s biggest-ever Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors of £379 million (CAN $671 million).
Also, a sexual abuse scandal at the Church of England forced the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign this month. Justin Welby knew for years about the horrific sexual abuse of parishioners by John Smyth, a well-known attorney who abused teenage boys and young men at Christian summer camps across Britain, Zimbabwe, and South Africa for over five decades.
A report on his half century of abuse (Smyth died in 2018) was made public on November 7th and Welby left that same week. Because the Archbishop is the head of The Church of England, his resignation was tendered to King Charles III.
10. Revolutions won and lost. The Ed Tech revolution has failed. The women’s revolution? Well, some think the future is female.
11. What I’m liking…Margaret Atwood spoke this summer at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference and was asked: “How close is the United States to a totalitarian state?” Her reply starts at 22:35…