Then There’s Beethoven…
Putin, Trump and Musk… Deeply malevolent men -- and the millions who follow them -- weigh heavily on me these days. Putin orders more unprepared young men into the Ukraine slaughterhouse. Musk fires half of Twitter (after buying the sinking ship for $44 billion). And Trump? Millions of Americans -- too much of humanity, really -- are enthralled by strutting thugs. We have this weakness for fascist strongmen. Even if they're hollow. It's enough to ruin your day, as Leonard Cohen would smile. If not put you off the benighted human race.
Then there's Beethoven, and Strange Angels like him. Last night, I tuned into PBS to watch the reopening of the David Geffen concert hall at New York's Lincoln Center. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra -- accompanied by a 120-strong choir -- celebrated the reopening by performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which includes the Ode to Joy, arguably the most transcendent piece of music ever created.
If humanity is capable of composing and performing a work of such soaring beauty and power as this, we are capable of anything. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is the closest we will come to heaven on Earth -- to proof that there is a celestial realm.
Beethoven's composition -- like the man himself - is filled with angels and demons, and suddenly demonic angels. It's a work of mad genius -- all genius carries a dash of madness. It's as intricate as human life, and as exquisite and heartbreaking.
Beethoven insisted on conducting his ninth (and last) symphony when it premiered in Vienna on May 7, 1824, though he had lost his hearing years earlier. Think of that. He composed the most beautiful music the world has ever heard when he was deaf. When all he could hear were the sounds in his own head.
Despite everything, I still believe in the human race. When all seems lost, strange angels, bodhisattvas, whatever you call them, show up to inspire us, to point to a higher realm. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Kennedys, the Beatles, Bob Marley, Nelson Mandela...
Beethoven's Ninth makes one believe in the ineffable. That life is more rapturous than it seems.
