Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The First Dose

What can I say? I was in the same room in which they took the X-rays on Monday, lying still in exactly the same way. I was told it would take about fifteen minutes. I seem to recall Søren Kierkegaard joking that eternity scared him because he could not even sit in a dentist's waiting room until it was time for his appointment. Fortunately, there was a CD player in the room, which helped me to form "landmarks" for the passing of time. The content was a rather arbitrary mix. I remember hearing the second movement of Joaquín Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez" while they were positioning me. This mysteriously morphed into the first movement of Antonín Dvořák's string serenade, and now I realize I cannot even remember what followed that excerpt! I asked if I could bring my own material. As I see it, both the third and fourth movements of Ludwig van Beethoven's Opus 106 (the "Hammerklavier" piano sonata) require just about the right duration; and it should be clear from my recent writing that I really need to be better acquainted with both of these movements! I just wonder if that kind of persistent listening will get on the nerves of the technical staff. The last thing I want to do is alienate them! Needless to say, if I can remember the music better than the treatment, this means that I emerged from my first dose with almost no sense of anything happening; so I shall probably reserve subsequent posts for any account of a cumulative effect, should it arise.

1 comment:

Bob said...

I've always been partial to Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez". Though not especially because of the music, mind you. One of our favorite hotels in San Jose, Costa Rica is called the Hotel Aranjuez.