Saturday was a sad day. It was sad in more ways than one. It's all got to do with love. I was extremely unhappy. In the afternoon, I met a friend. She poured her heart out to me about her relationship with her other half. Her love for him had withered. It had been draining away, slowly and imperceptibly, over more than a dozen years. It had been eaten away by the invisible nibbling of the silent monster called time. Their relationship had gone without fresh emotional nutrients for far too long. Now nothing is left but its dessicated form, like a completely worm eaten fruit whose seed at its core has been reduced to little more than its husk.
She told me she could no longer see any meaning in continuing the relationship. I agreed. Her children are now all grown up. She had a house to her name and sufficient savings. He too had alternative accomodation and sufficient income to see him through the rest of his life. His retirement did not bring any significant change. It was a torture to have to see and to live with a partner whom one no longer loves and who effectively has become a stranger! Her children, who have been observing their relationship at close quarters, agreed too to her taking steps to end such a relationship which has ceased to have any meaning for either of them The final liberation from the marital bond will at least give her back the freedom she gave up for the sake of her family for such a long time. More immediately, it would relieve her of the obligation of having to see him day in day out without having anything meaningful to say to each other.
I thought that after I gave her my opinion, the sense of sadness which began to pall over me as I was listening to her tale of sorrow would pass. It did not. What I could hardly bring myself to believe my eyes and my ears was the bizarre phenomenon that she talked to me about her marriage in an almost emotionless tone, her eyes staring vacantly into the air. It was almost as if she were recounting to me the tale of one of her distant friends! Once the full impact of that thought sank in, her accumulated sorrow hit me like a hurricane. I felt so sorry for her. How many times one's heart must have been broken before one could be reduced to such nonchalance, I asked myself. The relationship was killed not with an axe. Nor was it reduced to smithereens by a hammer. It was killed by a noiseless, invisible poison called indifference. Her suffering is not the suffering of hurtful words one heard in a verbally violent quarrel. There had not even been any quarrels! The marriage had died, in the most horrible silence. Madame Bovary could at least look forward to a new relationship with an interesting young man. She did not even have that!
I kept asking myself, how could the creator of this world, if there should be one, have created a world in which this kind of things could happen? How did she manage to continue such a relationship in which there is not even any active hatred? The relationship (I would hesitate to use the word emotional relationship because there is no longer any), had died long ago, not with a bang, without not so much as a whimper! It had simply vanished into thin air, like the water in what used to be a pond! It was so sad. Yet I heard it. It's true!
After the talk, I had to hurry home to get the ticket for the evening's concert at the City Hall. But somehow, my mood for listening to the music was gone. But having bought the ticket, and with hardly more than an hour before the start of the concert, I could hardly give it to a friend, it being a Saturday evening and such of my friends as would enjoy classical music would certainly have their social time table all booked. After a quickie snack at home, I walked to the City Hall, like a ghost, my mind still filled with sadness. I was just in time. All my friends were already there.
The concert began. It was an all Schumann programme, by the HKPO under de Waart: Manfred Overture, Op 115, Paino Concerto in A minor, Op 54, Symphony No. 4 in D minor. The Piano Concerto would be played by Chen Sa whom I already heard once.
The Manfred Overture is based on the Romantic tale by Lord Byron about the guilty sorrows of a nobleman arsing from the death of his secret lover. He tried to summon up 7 spirits to help him forget but they didn't help. He therefore wandered through the Alps trying to seek relief from his guilt but eventually chose to commit suicide rather than seek Christian redemption.The work was composed between August and November 1848. It was said that Schumann was so touched by the story that he couldn't sleep the night following his first reading of that story. It's a very forceful overture that opens with a three note motif which quickly drift into half tones giving it a very uncertain quality as if one were entering into a strange and unfamiliar territory but the sounds of struggle quickly appear, became stronger and stronger until at the end it quietens down to almost silence, perhaps signifying his death. It has a very haunting melody. Was he making any reference to the relationship between his wife with Brahms?
Then we had the performance from Chen Sa. As on the previous occasion, she entered the stage in her typically great strides and then swung both her shoulder and hands on the piano seat to concentrate and then started off the Piano Concerto by hitting the principal motif which was then continued by the orchestra. It has a melody very familiar to all music lover in which the piano and the clarinet play against each other, which is then endlessly repeated against the background sound by the whole orchestra, joining in contrast. The second and third movements, intermezzo and allegro vivace were played without a break. It was a very controlled piece demanding a great deal of very subtle play and although it can be quite energetic in places, it certainly is not the type of Liszt virtuoso pianistic piece which the people of his age had come to expect. It's quite lyrical. Schumann is always great on lyrical melodies. I like it. And Chen Sa played even better than last time, much less strident. Her phrasing is always very clear and unambiguous but she can also play poetically and softly too, especially those passages requiring almost continuous waves of sound blending into each other.
The final piece was Schumann's No. 4 Symphony. This is again another romantic symphony with a very classical structure which Schumann started almost immediately after finishing his third. It's a symphony with a very simple structure, using some very old forms like the passacaglia in its 4th movement. It opens with the orchestra playing the first theme, the second theme being introduced by the cello, and is in sonata form, the principal motif of the second movement being played by the winds and the second by the cello with the orchestra and ended rather softly. The third movement was in more or less scherzo form and for the first time, he uses the triangle to add to the rustic atmosphere. The final movement was very energetic and the symphony ended with a climax. But the music was also sad, not quite rousing. I like its principal melodies which are so hauntingly beautiful. But I was still under the shadow of the mood of the afternoon. When I walked home amidst all the youngsters going to Lan Kwai Fong with devils' horns, witches hats on their heads, superman, spiderman, clowns, ghost masks, daggers in their heads and plastic tridents or brooms, swords etc in their hands or wings or colorful capes on their backs for the halloween, its felt strangely incongruous with my mood. In fact, by contrast, they made me feel even sadder and more morose.
It was a good concert, but the music is not elevating like those of Shastakovich, Beethoven, Mahler etc and even the energetic passages were not without hints of underlying unhappiness. Especially after the events of the afternoon, I was overcome by melancholy and low moods. As I listened, the thoughts of what I heard in the afternoon kept intruding from time to time. I felt guilty why it was that some people in this world but not me should suffer so much that they have become numbed to their own suffering. And why should Brahms suffer for being unable to be united to Clara Schumann? I tried the Buddhist technique of interrupting my thoughts but it did not work. For the first time, I did not go with Mr. Chu and my other friends for the usual after concert snack and simply wanted to go home. I went straight to bed! I did not even have dinner!
Relationship is sometimes too difficult to understand and to manage... Other times , love is like a card game, and hence, luck and fate dictates all ! " Faded love, Act like somehow you don't care about it, Dead, love is dead when no one wants to care about it, Eat like a vampire when you ask for love, Dead like a stone when you don't need it anymore... Luck does come to you when it's your turn to win, Over and out, again and again, Velocity counts, catch some luck while you can, Establish some luck when there is no luck, lovely!" Good evening, my dear friend !
回覆刪除[版主回覆11/01/2010 01:11:00]I do not know what it is. Fate may have something to do with it but also how people grow up, their genes, their personalities, their fears, their attachments, their knowledge, their education and their preparedness for change ...It's too complicated!,
(Empty)
回覆刪除照鏡子看見鼻子上有一墨點，
回覆刪除很討厭，擦鏡子一定沒有用。
外面的如同鏡子，境界是緣，
引起了心中的好惡是非。
如迴光返照，觀察自心，
即能覺悟。
修道人知道是非好惡
是內心起了分別，
外面並沒有是非好惡。
石頭與寶石並無兩樣。
萬法平等，萬法一如，
無高下之分。
《金剛經》上說，世界是一合相。
「一」是科學家說的基本物質，
或稱為原子電子，佛家稱之為微塵。
所有一切物質均為它的組合，
一合相是平等的，
一切現象是緣聚緣散，
緣聚則生，緣散則滅。
一切萬象其實不生不滅。
[版主回覆11/01/2010 10:31:00]Thank you Superman for this mini lecture on the Buddhist concept of cause and effect. I like your imagery of finding a spot on our nose in the mirror and not be foolish enough to wipe the mirror to remove the spot on our nose and the idea that differences are created by our own thinking about reality and that differences do not reside in the external world. I learned about the latter idea but could not practiced what I learned, hence my uneasiness and bad mood for the whole evening.
一般的人，常常為情所苦，
回覆刪除可見得要放下感情，其實是件很不容易的事。
以因緣觀化解愛恨因愛而生怨、生恨是很不幸的，
從佛法的觀點來看，這些都是愚癡的行為，
因為真正的愛情要雙方你情我願，有因有緣才能成就，不是自己想要就要。
假使對方已經明白拒絕你的感情，自己卻還想盡辦法，想把對方追回來；
就好像賭輸的人一樣，心中不服氣，老是想翻本，
錢輸光了就想辦法再借，也因而愈陷愈深，不可自拔，
既然知道無法挽回，就不要再陷下去了，
應該趕快撤退，就算是以此為戒，
至少學到經驗，也就夠了，這樣就是對自己慈悲。
慈悲不僅是照顧別人，事實上，也是在保護自己。
[版主回覆11/01/2010 10:37:00]Yes you are right, when the causes for love have disappeared, it is natural that love should disappear too. When the causes have disappeared, we must learn to accept them as they are! But often in real life, we forget what we have learned and we fall into the traps set by our our forgetfulness, the traps set by our habits of always wanting to make distinctions and valorizing such distinctions. You are a wise man, Superman. Thank you for reminding me not to be drawn into suffering owing to my folly.
While not understanding the real reason behind the discord in the case you have mentioned, I dare not pass any judgment. I believe that no partners, married couples or unmarried partners, are free from squabbles. That’s part of life. From what I have personally experienced, couples sometimes fight just over very trivial matters. It’s mostly the foolish stubbornness to remain the one who speaks last so as to win the argument, without reaslising that the ill feelings so engendered will snowball into tons of dynamites ample enough for a final big blast one day. What is worst is the exchange of vicious words which serve no constructive purposes but just adds further fuels to the destructive raging fire. I have learned over the years how to compromise: to keep quiet at the right moment, to soothe the other party’s ego a bit, to even admit my mistake (there are occasions where I am really in the wrong because of bad mood for example). Unless the reason to break a relationship is due to disloyalty and deception, nothing is unsolvable. However, if a sour relationship has become irreparable, the sensible thing is separation. I know this easier said than done but always bear in mind this Chinese saying: 早知今日 , 何必當初 . 世上沒有後悔藥 .
回覆刪除[版主回覆11/01/2010 13:03:00]
In the case in question, one of the parties has a very Chinese attitude. She thought that quarrels do not solve any problem. She is right. But to me, she was only half right. Despite its possible damage, quarrels may serve a very useful function. They like small volanic eruptions. They relieved a little of the underlying pressures building beneath the surface and helped to give clear warnings to the other party what would be acceptable and what not. Men sometimes can be very obtuse in regard to what makes women unhappy. They may literally have to be hit on the head with a shovel before they would know that certain conduct which they took for granted would be acceptable was in fact not. To that extent minor quarrels may paradoxically be constructive. If the pressures had been building up silently when one party "expected" the other party would know when the other didn't, then the pressure would simply build up continually until it reaches an threshold of an explosition of really catastrophic proportions. But in this case, because one of the parties suffered "silently" until she became completely demoralized and lost all further hope, that did not happen. The relationship merely dried up gradually as I said in the most horrible "silence".
But I do agree with you that in the heat of the quarrel, unless we belong to the extremely calculating kind of person, we may often use words far stronger than would be called for for the particular kind of "insult/injury" imagined or thought to have been suffered by the furious dispenser of such damaging words in a vicious cycle of escalating insults. Sometimes, once they are out of our mouths, the damage inflicted may prove permanent despite ostensible "forgiveness" by the injured party after the quarrel.
早知今日 , 何必當初 . 世上沒有後悔藥 . Whilst this may be right, it is often unhelpful to say so. In fact, more damage might be caused by saying so because that would be equivalent to rubbing salt on to wounds.
A s in all human relationship, no one really knows if the right decision has been made. We can only act in circumstances of incomplete knowledge. Only time will tell if our choice is the right one.