I am happy to announce that I have started lessons with a classical singing teacher through the Royal College of Music. I had my first lesson yesterday evening singing Gute Nacht from Schubert’s Winterreise. To start therapy and classical singing lessons in the same month has been a boon for my mental health, to say the least.
I look back on my horrific experiences in the IMT, and I am grateful that I can now convert all my pain from that bleak period of my life into musical expression. When I sing, I am transformed, uplifted, delivered from the uttermost depths of sorrow and self-loathing. I think of what James Joyce wrote about music in the Sirens episode of Ulysses about Simon Dedalus’ singing:
‘It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness…’
…’Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings of reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers, touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie, Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn’t expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word.’
The sick, stunted and impoverished world of Trotskyism cannot hope to approximate such beauty. All it knows is the discipline of the barracks, the brainless ranting of the mentally-programmed agitator, the struggle sessions of a bullying, conformist ‘majority’, the tuneless renditions of ‘Solidarity Forever’ and other nauseating melodies. Throughout my two and a half years in that disgusting cult, I did not feel like I was myself. I was totally dissociated from my innermost being, except when in the silence of my lonely room, I opened my mouth and begun to sing…
I enjoy reading your column so very much. Good luck with your singing, even if I don’t like Mahler quite so much! We are poles apart politically and would disagree on so very much but, like yourself, I absolutely loathe these ridiculous idiots and their posturing, ranting, dogmatism and hypocrisy. I wonder if they are CIA stooges and revolutionary saboteurs, given their appaling ‘revolutionary’ track records?!!! They’re quick to accuse others of this, after all- based on zero evidence and a mountain of spite (only joking by the way. The CIA wouldn’t bother with these clowns!!)
The latest in a line of ludicrous nonsense I came across was a worthless diatribe by Alan Woods on philosophy. Thank God I only paid two quid!! How do these people get away with this shit? A bit like one on science he and that ranting, dogmatic idiot Ted Grant did. That is even more absurd. These clowns are the dialectic of the non enlightenment, to paraphrase Adorno and Horkheimer (even if you’re unlikely to approve of the content!!!). Look forward to the next instalment.