I have always been obsessive. Since I was little, I have always found things to fall in love with and then have torn them apart to bits and pieces with obsession. I've never loved something only slightly. I don't think my DNA would allow for only slightly loving something.
I did not grow up in a musical household. My parents liked bands and things, but it wasn't the sort of household where there were instruments and records laying about. My mom was always very proud of her taste in music but it never felt put on to me in the way I read about other musicians or enthusiasts growing up "listening to music on Sunday mornings." Our family listened to the same bands and songs for years and years and years. The playlist never really changed. It was mainly acoustic guitar/singer-songwriter-type music. The only curveball was my dad's bizarre interest with Deee-Lite. But for the most part it was Norah Jones, The Dave Matthews Band, and Ella Fitzgerald over dinner. Music was pleasant noise.
When I find something to get obsessed with it's simultaneously exciting and yet also at times nauseating. It can start to feel kind of crazy. If I find a musician I really like, I just about lose my mind going through everything they have to offer. This can last for many years sometimes. The same goes for other things such as authors. From 2018-2020, I could really only read anything written by Siri Hustvedt. I read one good thing she wrote and down the Siri slide I went. I even began to write her letters and attended a book signing of her husband, Paul Auster, in hopes she'd be there. She wasn't. I get obsessed with restaurants and certain cuisines. The only reason I won't eat at the same place 3 times a day is to spare my friend's appetites or the restaurant just simply isn't open. I could eat sashimi for every meal, I think. I got obsessed with the bus recently. Still am. Sometimes when I feel extremely depressed I ride the bus. I ride the bus as much as I can and a lot of my dreams take place there. I talk about the bus so much sometimes I can see my friend's eyes glaze over and they temporarily go somewhere else while I talk about riding the bus. That's where the nauseating aspect of it all comes in.
The first time I noticed I liked classical music I was in my mom's brand new car that had all these fancy features such as showing on a dashboard what song was playing on the radio. Her dad had just died and she got a new car because when she was driving to his house as he was dying in his living room she had been t-boned by a drunk driver and her car was totaled. We were listening to the classical station in the new car cause that's what my grandfather would have listened to and my mom was missing him. Erik Satie's Gymnopedies were playing and it was early Spring. I made note of the title and downloaded it. I would listen to it on my iPod all of that Spring from then on. I would listen to it on repeat in the hallways between classes and ride my bike around and I would listen to it in the bathtub and in bed and I would listen to it at the grocery store and in my headphones around the house but I never told anyone. I listened to it till I couldn't anymore and yet I still have a hard time listening to it without feeling bothered.
3 years later I am 16 years old and living in a village in Hungary feeling terribly lonely. Every day after school I'd walk home and listen to some piece of music I had found that I thought was titled, Adagietto by some guy named Gustav Mahler (the 4th movement from his 5th symphony, but I didn't know that at the time). The word 'adagietto' just means for the music to be performed "slightly slow". I thought it was somebody's name or meant something deep in Italian. I didn't give a rats ass who made it I just thought it sounded romantic and pretty and lonely. I didn't talk to anyone at school because I didn't speak Hungarian and most people didn't like me or try to speak English with me. I'd just read books my mom had sent me in care packages and listen to this song called Adagietto by some old European guy named Mahler. His name mattered nothing to me. It was just the sound of the music I was interested in. But just that one movement, nothing else. The fastest 11 minutes of my life! I wanted it to be longer. I wanted it to go on forever. I'd go to the bar after school with my friend Diana and I'd go into the bathroom and listen to it and hide from her.
Years went by and when I moved to New York at 18 I listened to pop, techno, shoe gaze, Joanna Newsom, Björk, Fiona Apple, Chairlift, etc. I liked all kinds of music and classical was more of an ambiance than it was an interest. I'd play it at the cafe sometimes as a way of setting a tone on a rainy morning but I didn't give a damn what was playing on the radio. Then something switched.
Classical music became this ray of light in my mind that just sort of lit everything up. All of the dark corners and shadows were suddenly in the light. It was like this bright flash of a camera that still has not gone away. What I thought was just a corner is now a very long hallway. It's like those videos you see online of someone finding a staircase behind drywall that leads to somewhere they didn't know about upon purchasing their home. I can recall many things with clarity in my life but that light turning on is not one of them.
So one day that Adagietto by that guy Gustav Mahler came back around in my orbit. I fell back into it and thought "Wow I've been listening to this for 9 years! I wonder what else this Mahler guy has to show me". It was all gibberish noise of what I found in his oeuvre. It was just more classical music but nothing really struck a chord like that Adagietto I was so in love with in high school did. It sounded like all the other classical music. I wondered how anyone could distinguish all of it. It just sounded like a genre and not an artist.
It is now I can remember what really started this all. I became obsessed with buying my ex-boyfriend gifts because I was making lots of money working as a consultant for a branding office and it was a new found freedom for me to buy things. I was really bad at the consulting job but they paid me $1000 a week anyhow. I shopped all the time. I was swimming in money. I went to the fancy poster store and found a pretty poster for some Godard movie called, Hail Mary. I hadn't seen it and neither had my boyfriend. But the poster was really pretty and in great condition and extremely large so I thought it would fill the empty walls of his new apartment quite nicely. I gave it to him for Christmas that year and he hung it up all crooked (he never leveled it and it still is crooked). It was only about one month after I gave him that poster I thought "What even is this movie I got him a poster of? Why did I buy that for him? Neither of us have even seen it yet whenever someone comes over they think we are big Godard fans. The least I could do is watch the trailer" The trailer features a piece of music I fell in love with. It's the 4th movement of Mahler's 9th Symphony. This changed my life. That movement was the fuse of firework that has now completely altered my life. I listened to that movement over and over for about 6 months straight. Ever since that movement came into my life everything is different and I am so happy for it.
Mahler's impact on my life over the past couple of years has been undeniably transformative and inspiring. His music has opened doors to many passageways and corners of the classical music world but his music alone has been the centerpiece of my intrigue and obsession to classical music. It feels genuine. It has been such a joy getting to have his music soar through my life and there doesn't seem to be an end to this intrigue. It still feels new. As I write this I am listening to Mahler's 5th Symphony. The 4th movement just began some 29 seconds ago. This is the same movement I found one day in high school over a decade ago. This is the same movement that just 7 months ago I found myself in Berlin hearing live for the first time next to a man who became the center of my world for a brief yet beautiful little period. It was then and there in Berlin, amongst the still and focused audience, that I decided I'd write about this all. I decided then and there that I will see all of Mahler's 9 symphonies live, with no intention of order. The only rule was that I'd only see it if it felt right in that time. For example if the 8th Symphony was playing tomorrow, I wouldn't have it in me to see it because the 8th Symphony is not something I am interested in right now. The concert would have to happen in line with my interest in that particular symphony.
I don't know how long this whole project will take but the first piece will be published here on May 18th. I am very excited about it, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy talking about it. I don't know who it is for but I trust it will find its right audience the way most anything does.
xx
