When I was going through a crisis many years ago, my mother asked: “Are you going to live this life, or are you going to let it live you?” I think that I was 14 at the time. I remember, even at that age, comprehending the wisdom of that question and feeling the great weight of mortality press upon me. A realization crept over me; I was wasting my life. “I must,” I thought, “do something great.”
That was around the time that I had discovered my father’s record collection. Every weekend it was a new record, and a new universe of sound and thought. The more I listened, the less I knew, and I was desperate, desperate, after hearing that music, because it held the secret to the world. Then, in walked my mother, and she asked: “are you living?”
Among those records, I found a recording of Mahler’s first symphony (Bruno Walter, Columbia Symphony Orchestra). The instant that needle made contact, something emerged. I felt a crack in the eggshell in which I had unknowingly been living.
I had never heard a sound like that, of course, but it was more than that. I had never imagined a sound like that. I could never have imagined a sound like that. I think that that sound was my first truly educational experience.
So, I harangued my mother until she finally took me to buy some of Mahler’s scores. I was completely overwhelmed, but that was ok. I was only 14. Mahler had been 28 at the premiere, so I still had 14 years to master counterpoint (and orchestration, and form, and to have my heart broken so I would have something to write about), and perhaps I would be ready to write my first great symphony at 26!
28 came and went and no symphony materialized. In the interim, I had discovered that I had no skill as a composer and almost no skill as a performer. I had tried other avenues: poems, novels, plays. All of my efforts were uninspiring, which was a shame because I could still hear my mother ask: “are you ever going to live this life?” That’s what living was to me – creating something. It wasn’t about what you got out of your life, it was about what you put into it.
Recently, that old feeling has returned. This rather fetching young lady named Diablo Cody (a pseudonym) has written a screenplay for a film called Juno, which I haven’t seen but which, I hear, is excellent. A friend described it as witty, with a clever plot and well-developed characters. In other words, it’s the sort of thing that every aspiring writer wishes that they could write.
My friend’s review really affected me. You see, Diablo Cody and I are roughly the same age. Here I am, older than Mahler was when he wrote his first. A contemporary of mine has written a critically acclaimed screenplay (and a book), and I’m still wondering whether I’ve started living my life yet.
The last time I felt this way was when I turned 27 and learned that I was actually older than John Keats was when he died. Keats died at 26. All of the insight that he distilled into those marvelous poems, he garnered in just 26 years.
I’m several years older than Keats now. Perhaps it’s time to stopping wondering how he did it. Perhaps I should just be glad that he did.
