Love, Obsession, and Largo

I thought I was coming to the East Coast for a political demonstration. It turns out I have come to visit a number of young women I know and love. The one I am visiting now is a gifted concert pianist who for many years has not performed outside the walls of her apartment. She thinks she's not good enough. She thinks she's too lazy (though she works twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week, at the stressful job she has ended up with). She thinks the music business is too competitive, she's not up to it, there's no use.

Right now she is in the throes of an obsessive love for someone who is unavailable for her except in short, intense bursts; someone who is unwilling to commit, isn't willing to change his life to fit her in except now and then, when nothing else is more important to him. She escapes her heartbreak by playing the piano, and last night near the end of an hour or so of impassioned playing, she played a piece known as Handel's Largo. She played it gently, tenderly, very slowly, with a light touch, as if she were caressing the face of her beloved, not the keys of a piano. It was deeply sensual, that tender playing.

About 40 years ago I was in love with someone who was unavailable for me except in short, intense bursts; who was unwilling to commit, who wasn't willing to change his life to fit me in except now and then, when nothing else was more important to him. During the short time we lived together in New York City, he played Handel's Largo almost every night. He played it as if it were a march, with great loud, forceful, pounding booming chords. It was robustly sexual, that ferocious playing.

I have repeated that pattern, craving the attention and affection of an unavailable man or woman, many times in my long life, and not surprisingly it has come to the same end every time. I don't tell her this, though it is obvious. I live alone.

I feel with this young pianist, feel for her, cry with her. I suppose it is politics of a kind, but not the politics I expected. It is solidarity, but how we would love to be in some other group.

(Photo edited in Picnik.)