Winterreise

It is always more meaningful to grab inspiration and perspective from the creative.

Because they feel.

NHPR. Driving home last night listening to winter reflections from Bill T. Jones, choreographer and dancer.

He was talking about the memories that music can evoke. For him, the piece "Winterreise" by Schubert has powerful life connections. It is a song cycle about a solitary traveler in a savage winter whose heart is frozen in grief.

The music sparks a memory of when he was in the fourth grade, day dreaming and looking out the window on a frosty cold, blustery winter day. He was watching a man walking along the highway, turning his back to the bitter cold and snow and Jones was feeling sorry for the guy.

He suddenly realized that man was his father. His father had been the director of his own contracting business in the late fifties, but the business had died and now he was broke and sick and trying to fend for his family.

On that day, as Jones describes it: ".....................and he had to get to this very insignificant job in a factory, miles and miles away. A black man, with no car, trying to hitchhike, and no one picking him up, and he has to walk that 10 miles to get to the factory."

Jones felt tormented at that moment, torn between two worlds. He was sitting in a warm classroom, which is what his dad wanted him to do so he could live a better life. Yet he was watching his father struggle through bitter cold and snow to get to a shitty job so he could support the family.

Could he better serve his father by staying in the classroom, or by running out into the storm to somehow try to help him?

There is so much to that one story, that one moment. The father/son thing, racism, survival, dreams versus reality.

Heavy duty.

He relates it back to the music by saying: "And this music, when I hear it, I feel for my father. There's something about art that can be, yes, depressing, but helps us bear the pain through shear beauty and intensity."

Gregg Allman sings: "I make my living, pouring out my pain." I know in my heart that his voice would not move me the way it does if Gregg had not experienced his own level of suffering.  Through pain, he brings me beauty and escape and relief.

In talking about how his perspective for this music and his father has changed over the years, Jones says: "It's taken on a greater weight over the years. There's now more and more. My body speaks to the body I saw from a child's distance, from a parent. I understand him inside and even outside now. I'm not afraid of aging, but the idea of what is success in life, what is a life well-spent. His dreams were behind him at that point; where are my dreams now? I love him so much for getting out there that day, with no car, and really not talking to us about it, not complaining, just facing it alone. I love him so much, but did I ever tell him I love him? Probably not."

I don't know where to go from here. Instead of drawing my typical pompous conclusions I'll let you rest with your own impressions.

Ciao.