The Monet Story - Pt 2

I love getting up early in the morning. The days always feel different and more magical. Just a few minutes ago I stepped out in the first cold of the season, a relaxed dawn creeping up just round the corner. Cold, yet musical: birds as lively as ever, the owls' chicks possibly upset by my presence. And why a dawn would trigger Debussy’s Clair de Lune in my mind just beats me. Somehow, we have Monet to thank for that too - the painter, of course[1].

So here I am, enjoying my impressions and experiences. And that’s probably what life mostly is to us human beings: experience. One that shapes us, quite literally, starting from our very own brain structure. And when experiences are past, we make them our stories, the ones we tell ourselves and others every day. We are storytellers by nature, so much as to tell stories with our eyes closed. That’s what dreaming is all about, right? We write the script, choose the actors and setting, give indications to the director, and finally claim the front seat to suspend our disbelief and enjoy the show.

The quality of experience should rarely be that of ‘true or false’ or ‘right or wrong’ - which we too often seek and get obsessed with. An experience always contains per se a truth of one kind or another. It offers a key to unlock a treasure, one often corresponding to the potential of transformation. We may like it or not, fight it or embrace it, but we cannot erase this intrinsic truth exclusive to the individual. And when we feel like sharing it, it becomes something else. Precisely, a story, which in turn becomes someone else’s unique experience.

Alright, enough beating around the bush - lest I startle the blackbirds too[2].

As you may have guessed, I wasn’t in very good health back in October 2018. I had been rather ill for over a year, and my condition was all but improving. In November, a month later, I also went down with pneumonia, which dragged on until February 2019. Altogether, I was bedridden for six months, in what I’d describe as the most nightmarish experience of my life.

I’d rather skip this part, to be honest, but if I did… well, not much of a story really. Contrast always does a good job in bringing out an image after all. How many times are we called to look upon what we dread the most? And how many times do we refuse the call? Still, it's in such horror that we occasionally find bliss.

I won’t tell you how I ended up in this dreadful state, that’s another story entirely; suffice to say that, amidst a wide variety of symptoms, my brain faculties were badly affected: tremendous difficulty, almost an incapacity, in remembering, speaking, thinking, feeling, etc.

I’d literally be lying, either in bed or on the couch, 24 hours a day, struggling and battling just to go to the toilet, eat, or drink. It's not as if I was sleeping all the time: I felt stuck in a limbo, buried alive, not even able to access my own thoughts and memories. There was a terrifying sense of idle eternity. And when I felt the state was one of waiting, I could only call the object of the same death, mercy, or both.

The most I could do was lie on the couch watching cookery programs, not realising they were usually repeats. Never remembering names, plots, nor anything else for that matter.

But life is tenacious, and wise, and full of wondrous surprises. It has a knack for effortlessly providing plot twists, ones that bring tears to our eyes and which we love to call miracles.

One day, in that same February in which my pneumonia finally subsided, I opened my laptop and decided to fiddle with a software that had been lying there for ages, one I’d never used before. It was a musical notation software I installed, as I had always dreamt of becoming a composer one day (openly or secretly). A childhood dream safely locked away in my heart.

I started clicking on the empty score, on the lines and spaces of the staff. Of course I was rather clueless about what I was doing, but I could hear the notes playing back as I placed them here and there.

And precisely there was the marvel: something clicked within, a light reflected on the bottom of a well. I can only describe it as the most powerful spark or ignition, a solitary star hanging in a space of infinite darkness. It was the most profound experience, one I will never be able to put down in words, which gave me hope and so much more. It was the beginning of my recovery.

So now I had a stimulus which was gradually bringing me back to life. I started a score which I aptly called Test,

which developed into this…

... and would later end up like this:

Having found a will to battle whatever my body and mind had undergone, I started looking more and more for medical help (doctors, specialists, etc.). The sad truth, though, is that nobody was able help me. It seemed as if nothing could be done. Looking back, I probably felt a bit like Glenn Cunningham, in whom I'd later find great inspiration.

I was terrified, and convinced I’d have to live the rest of my life with very limited capacities. Uni days weren't that far back in my timeline, and yet here I was unable to read and memorise a single phrase.

The good thing about music, however, was exactly this: I didn’t need to remember what I was doing, as it would stay on the score and I could play it back to my heart's content.

This miraculously helped me regain basic functions and abilities in time without too much frustration: the immediate auditory feedback was gratifying and stress free. It was kind of... fun.

After Test, I started working on Test 2, which I doodled with until it sounded like this:

As I was slowly recovering - we're now in March 2019 - I started writing Sea of Happy-Long-Ago, the first composition containing lyrics. At this stage, I realised that if, on the one hand, reading felt almost impossible and pointless, on the other hand writing could at least get me somewhere. Sure, I couldn't recall my own words either, but they'd remain. Every day I'd find them waiting for me, same as the notes.

It was the most peculiar feeling: it either felt as if somebody else had written the previous lines or as if I had received messages from a parallel universe.

Sea of Happy-Long-Ago was destined to become my first song and demo. In other words, it laid the first stone for my songwriting.

When I think about what happened, about that spark, it still brings tears to my eyes. It was as if a voice from deep within offered to do all the talking. And what it had to say then makes plenty of sense to me today.

I was astonished, in recent times, when I learned about an anecdote regarding the Joyce family. James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and her father asked doctor Carl Jung to treat her.

You’ll find different versions, but the bottom line remains the same. One goes as follows:

“Doctor Jung, have you noticed that my daughter seems to be submerged in the same waters as me?” to which he answered: “Yes, but where you swim, she drowns.”

And this is what my psyche - may as well call it that - came up with:

In the Sea of Happy-Long-Ago

sails many a madman

Wonder if we'll meet

Gonna build me a little paper boat

and rock gently

on the deadly waves

Shall I dive or sink in

my own waters, dear Lord?

Who knows?

Then a storm rose and hit me very hard,

wish-wash brainwash

All the lights are gone

Children laughin' from the Shore of Yore,

the sound wakes me

Could this be my home?

Memories, please stay and

give me shelter, don't go

Don't go

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I feel the imagery is pretty much the same. My psyche knew exactly where it was, and did all it possibly could to swim amongst those deadly waves.

Plus, unbeknownst to me, more help was on its way. No Carl Jung, just my beloved doctor Monet.

---

1. Claude Debussy carried the ideas of impressionist art - of which Claude Monet was a founder member - into music.

2. That's right, blackbirds have claimed our hedge, rent-free.