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Antidotes & fortifiers
Inspired by a recent Gail Caldwell column in the Boston Globe, in which she wondered why self-help books had replaced favorite works of fiction, poetry, and music as sources of human solace, the editors of BCM took up a search for artful therapies. Three sages whom we sought out—David DeKeyser ’08, a communication major and DJ at the campus radio station, WZBC; Andrzej Herczynski, laboratory director and lecturer in physics; and Judith Wilt, the Newton College Alumnae Chair in the English department—kindly offered their prescriptions. Readers are invited to send in their own antidotes and fortifiers for posting online.
Love
Yo La Tengo’s song “Don’t Have to Be So Sad.” It’s tender and beautiful.
Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night, one of 14 Lord Peter Wimsey books: Academic women at a fictional Oxford college in the 1930s debate very contemporary work/life problems, contend with a mystery, and express painful skepticism about whether you can love and be wise—and Harriet Vane, after three novels, comes to happy terms with Lord Peter.
The Romantics—what else. For soothing the heart, few pieces can match Schubert’s Notturno, the dreamy piano trio in one movement, especially in the sublime performance by the Beaux Arts Trio.
Anger
A long walk in a park or around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.
The Simpsons: “22 Short Films About Springfield.” Even when I’m angry, the Simpsons crack me up. This is my favorite episode.
Stick a CD of a loud Broadway musical into the car’s player, find a hospitable freeway, and drive. There is nothing like Follies‘ “I’m Still Here” to bring me back to myself.
Heartache
“Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,” a song by the British band Spiritualized.
Writing a letter—by hand. I still remember how this is done and find the experience cathartic in its quaint inefficiency.
I used to sing along with Elton John: “So goodbye yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl, you can’t plant me in your penthouse, I’m going back to my plough.” But it only helped marginally. Nothing has replaced it. Nothing needs to.
World-weariness
An afternoon among the Fitz Hugh Lanes at the Museum of Fine Arts, or a walk along Boston harbor looking from islands to airplanes to buildings along the quays.
DragonForce’s “Fury of the Storm.” Seven minutes long, mind-blowing guitar solos, falsettos any singer would die to hit, drumming that never dips below 180 beats per minute, and lyrics about “smashing through the boundaries with the fire and fury”—how could I be bored listening to that?
Escape into music and solitude. When I am depressed, I listen to one of Orlande de Lassus’ Penitential Psalms (1560). The magnificent polyphony of these introspective choral pieces, and their nobility, testify to the human capacity for transforming misery into art. In the fifth psalm, after rendering “Similis factus sum pellicano solitudinis: factum sum sicut nycticorax in domicillo” (I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl in the desert), the music reaches utmost poignancy with “Dies mei sicut umbra declinaverunt: et ego, sicut foenum arui” (My days are like a shadow that declineth: and I am withered like grass).
Courage
I turn to two authors whose names are not often spoken in the same sentence: Charles Dickens, particularly Our Mutual Friend, and Mary Daly’s Beyond God the Father.
Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation’s Capital, by Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins. This book dispels the idea that all the early punks aimed to be was loud, crass, and violent. It shows a group of true friends with constant problems and a set of strong beliefs.
The example of others. Like all politically minded students in communist Poland, I sought to emulate prominent dissidents. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, circulated in smuggled copies, was the ultimate inspiration; we knew he wrote the whole book in his head right under the noses of his captors. Against this background, my own conduct—signing protest letters, reciting banned poetry, attending clandestine debates (how insignificant it all seems today)—was de rigeur. Nowadays, I feel courage is seldom demanded of me: My troubles stem more from being too outspoken than too reticent.
Ambition
Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, notably the great soliloquy of Cyrano in the second act—read aloud in French. Reflecting upon the number of my years, but the paucity of my achievements, I find it helpful to repeat after Cyrano:
Et modeste d’ailleurs, se dire: mon petit,
Sois satisfait des fleurs, des fruits, même des feuilles,
Si c’est dans ton jardin à toi que tu les cueilles!
(And with modesty, say to oneself: my boy,
Be satisfied with flowers, fruit, even leaves,
If it is in your own garden that you pick them!)
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.
Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, in which the architect Howard Roark allows nothing, not even his own creation, to stand in the way of personal will. I remain suspicious of Rand, however, because she is suspicious of all ambition except the most private desire to do the job. I believe in communal ambitions, and enjoy them.
Insomnia
The Icelandic band Sigur Rós’s composition “Njósnavélin.”
I read detective stories I’ve read before—so soothing in the sense that difficult questions have firm answers.
When this affliction troubles me, I accept it and let memories run through my head, thinking of where I went wrong, rehearsing the perfect comeback, or, in greater likelihood, a gentle apology. A few hours of this torture send me into a deep sleep.
