Topical Guide 458
Mark Dorset
Music Appreciation
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:
Bach soothes him, Beethoven worries him, Shostakovich terrifies him.
[BTW: Shostakovich doesn’t scare me! MD]
Future, the: Expectations for
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 3:
If what he was getting was the best there was, and it seemed none too good, then what was the basis for hope? It is a curse of the mind inclined to sadness that, given time, it will find the rotten spot in even the ripest, most promising idea.
Little Follies, “The Fox and the Clam”:
At the end of the school year, on the last day, when Matthew and I were carrying our chairs up from the boiler room, he said to me, “Peter, I want to ask you something, and I don’t want you to laugh.”
“All right,” I said.
“Are we friends?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I think so.”
“Then tell me something.”
“Yeah?”
“Why are you happy all the time?” he asked.
“I’m not happy all the time,” I said.
“Well then, why are you happy most of the time?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. It was an honest answer.
“Do you think I’ll be happy someday?” he asked.
I looked at him. He wasn’t looking at me. I thought of lying, but I didn’t.
“No,” I said.
We didn’t say anything more to each other that day, and I didn’t see Matthew again until September. I discovered, however, that he had infected me with a sympathetic melancholy that lasted well into the summer.
See also:
Music: Ottorino Respighi’s “Ancient Airs and Dances for the Lute” TG 53; Records; Audio Equipment TG 12; Jazz: Coleman Hawkins: “Body and Soul” TG 252; Rock ’n’ Roll TG 457
Happiness TG 94
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