Something to Obsess Over
Psychiatrists spend entire careers – and get very rich – trying to find out what makes crazy people tick differently from the rest of us. Pharmaceutical companies spend years trying to find remedies to make crazy people semi-normal. The rest of us go crazy just trying to make sense of crazy people.
There would be many more crazy people running around, only they find something positive on which to focus their compulsive tendencies. Women knit and crochet when their kids drive them nuts. More athletic types take up running. Others go to yoga classes. The truly incurable compulsives either take up golf or music.
Golfers are maniacs. Like smokers, the first time they pick up that golf club, they’re hooked for life. They just can’t quit and they’re doing the world a favor focusing their manic tendencies on a little golf ball. They usually choose a spouse and friends who share the habit because they would drive anyone else out of their minds with their endless obsession with finding the perfect swing.
Musicians start early. Learning to play the piano, in particular, is exceedingly monotonous. The piano keyboard is one set of keys multiplied eight or nine times. The variations come in the scales. Scales are essential to becoming proficient, but you have to have the patience for the monotony of it. You can’t play even the simplest tune confidently and correctly without knowing your scales. But you have to “scale” the monotony of it all before you even get to those “five easy pieces” and most normal kids give up long before that point.
But this is a good thing for the mind that needs to learn discipline and not scatter itself over a lifetime. Once a musician, particularly a pianist, gets the hang of playing, there’s no stopping them. They become obsessed with playing. The better you are, the more obsessed you become with perfection. So, professional musicians would actually be crazy people, locked away in some rubber room, only they discovered the saving grace of music. Conductors are even worse because they know better how to play every instrument, but they have to direct, which isn’t the same as playing your instrument. Most find some other group to play with to play their chosen instrument and save their sanity.
Loughner was said to be a good musician in high school, and a football player. But apparently he wasn’t interested in that kind of music after high school, or perhaps no groups were available, and he formed a punk garage band instead. The reports haven’t stated whether or how long he continued his music, but I gather that he abandoned it. That, along with breaking up with the high school sweetheart and experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, may have contributed his downward spiral towards madness.
Actor George Sanders (of The Saint fame) suffered a couple of strokes near the end of his life. He had always been an accomplished pianist and even a singer. When he found he could no longer play his beloved piano, he took it out into the yard and smashed it with an axe. A short time later, he took his own life.
Another actor, Dudley Moore, was also a trained, classical pianist. In the 1990s, he developed a fatal neurological disease that caused him to stumble about as though he were drunk. Eventually, he was completely paralyzed. Moore, also a movie score composer, was heartbroken when he could no longer play his piano. He was also going through a divorce, and spent his remaining days at the home of a friend in Plainfield, N.J. According to reports, the last thing his friend told him before dying was, “I can hear music all around me.”
In the film, Five Easy Pieces (referring to a beginner’s piano book), the Jack Nicholson character, Robert Dupea gives up his promising career as a concert pianist because he finds the routine of daily practice boring. A restless, angry individual, he takes to the road, wanting to see the world and find something or someone to quell his inner turmoil. Finding work as an oil rigger, his life is even more limited to his love interest, a waitress named Rayette and bowling with his best buddy.
When Robert hears from his sister (his whole family are professional musicians) that their father has suffered two strokes, he drives up to Washington to see him, taking Rayette with him. Dumping her at a motel because he’s ashamed of her background, he goes on to Seattle where he’s confronted by the rich, cultured family that he had left behind. There, he falls for his brother’s fiancée but when Rayette shows up unexpectedly, the family insults her. Bobby defends her and they depart, but then he abandons her at a truck stop and gets onto a truck and leaves everything behind.
My grandmother was an excellent pianist. She could play anything by ear on one hearing. She and my grandfather had a horrible relationship. When they moved to their final home, she bought a Kimball piano with the softest, tinkliest tone she could buy so that he couldn’t fume about her playing, even though he was so hard of hearing that he had to blast the television until you could hear it plainly out on the street, with the doors and windows closed.
She bought my piano for me when I was about ten. But I suffered a similar fate, in a small house with an intolerant family of brothers. I learned what it was like for my grandmother, to want to be able to play and yet not be able to. Now, I live in a condo apartment where there are fairly lax rules about the hours (no playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. – I would have made it 9 a.m. especially on weekend mornings).
Grandma finally came to live us, where she played the piano she bought for me. Finally, she went back to live with my grandfather. I think she had opportunities to play when he would go out to town hall meetings to harass the politicians (who begged my mother to find a way to keep him home).
Other people have a passion for cars and spend their lives restoring antique cars. We have guys at work who do that. Every year at the annual picnic, they display their antique cars. One man completely restored a 1962 Porsche to showroom condition. People actually begged to have their photos taken in this car.
There’s something for everyone to do, besides going out and shooting other people up. Those who can’t find something and are intent on mayhem need to be locked up. They’re so locked up inside themselves that it takes years of therapy to unlock that door and restore them to sanity, if they can be restored. But for those on the edge: Get help from someone in the real world. Find something positive to do. Don’t drink or do drugs. Don't take things so seriously. And have faith that you can rejoin the real world and find peace. You’re not alone.
There would be many more crazy people running around, only they find something positive on which to focus their compulsive tendencies. Women knit and crochet when their kids drive them nuts. More athletic types take up running. Others go to yoga classes. The truly incurable compulsives either take up golf or music.
Golfers are maniacs. Like smokers, the first time they pick up that golf club, they’re hooked for life. They just can’t quit and they’re doing the world a favor focusing their manic tendencies on a little golf ball. They usually choose a spouse and friends who share the habit because they would drive anyone else out of their minds with their endless obsession with finding the perfect swing.
Musicians start early. Learning to play the piano, in particular, is exceedingly monotonous. The piano keyboard is one set of keys multiplied eight or nine times. The variations come in the scales. Scales are essential to becoming proficient, but you have to have the patience for the monotony of it. You can’t play even the simplest tune confidently and correctly without knowing your scales. But you have to “scale” the monotony of it all before you even get to those “five easy pieces” and most normal kids give up long before that point.
But this is a good thing for the mind that needs to learn discipline and not scatter itself over a lifetime. Once a musician, particularly a pianist, gets the hang of playing, there’s no stopping them. They become obsessed with playing. The better you are, the more obsessed you become with perfection. So, professional musicians would actually be crazy people, locked away in some rubber room, only they discovered the saving grace of music. Conductors are even worse because they know better how to play every instrument, but they have to direct, which isn’t the same as playing your instrument. Most find some other group to play with to play their chosen instrument and save their sanity.
Loughner was said to be a good musician in high school, and a football player. But apparently he wasn’t interested in that kind of music after high school, or perhaps no groups were available, and he formed a punk garage band instead. The reports haven’t stated whether or how long he continued his music, but I gather that he abandoned it. That, along with breaking up with the high school sweetheart and experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, may have contributed his downward spiral towards madness.
Actor George Sanders (of The Saint fame) suffered a couple of strokes near the end of his life. He had always been an accomplished pianist and even a singer. When he found he could no longer play his beloved piano, he took it out into the yard and smashed it with an axe. A short time later, he took his own life.
Another actor, Dudley Moore, was also a trained, classical pianist. In the 1990s, he developed a fatal neurological disease that caused him to stumble about as though he were drunk. Eventually, he was completely paralyzed. Moore, also a movie score composer, was heartbroken when he could no longer play his piano. He was also going through a divorce, and spent his remaining days at the home of a friend in Plainfield, N.J. According to reports, the last thing his friend told him before dying was, “I can hear music all around me.”
In the film, Five Easy Pieces (referring to a beginner’s piano book), the Jack Nicholson character, Robert Dupea gives up his promising career as a concert pianist because he finds the routine of daily practice boring. A restless, angry individual, he takes to the road, wanting to see the world and find something or someone to quell his inner turmoil. Finding work as an oil rigger, his life is even more limited to his love interest, a waitress named Rayette and bowling with his best buddy.
When Robert hears from his sister (his whole family are professional musicians) that their father has suffered two strokes, he drives up to Washington to see him, taking Rayette with him. Dumping her at a motel because he’s ashamed of her background, he goes on to Seattle where he’s confronted by the rich, cultured family that he had left behind. There, he falls for his brother’s fiancée but when Rayette shows up unexpectedly, the family insults her. Bobby defends her and they depart, but then he abandons her at a truck stop and gets onto a truck and leaves everything behind.
My grandmother was an excellent pianist. She could play anything by ear on one hearing. She and my grandfather had a horrible relationship. When they moved to their final home, she bought a Kimball piano with the softest, tinkliest tone she could buy so that he couldn’t fume about her playing, even though he was so hard of hearing that he had to blast the television until you could hear it plainly out on the street, with the doors and windows closed.
She bought my piano for me when I was about ten. But I suffered a similar fate, in a small house with an intolerant family of brothers. I learned what it was like for my grandmother, to want to be able to play and yet not be able to. Now, I live in a condo apartment where there are fairly lax rules about the hours (no playing between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. – I would have made it 9 a.m. especially on weekend mornings).
Grandma finally came to live us, where she played the piano she bought for me. Finally, she went back to live with my grandfather. I think she had opportunities to play when he would go out to town hall meetings to harass the politicians (who begged my mother to find a way to keep him home).
Other people have a passion for cars and spend their lives restoring antique cars. We have guys at work who do that. Every year at the annual picnic, they display their antique cars. One man completely restored a 1962 Porsche to showroom condition. People actually begged to have their photos taken in this car.
There’s something for everyone to do, besides going out and shooting other people up. Those who can’t find something and are intent on mayhem need to be locked up. They’re so locked up inside themselves that it takes years of therapy to unlock that door and restore them to sanity, if they can be restored. But for those on the edge: Get help from someone in the real world. Find something positive to do. Don’t drink or do drugs. Don't take things so seriously. And have faith that you can rejoin the real world and find peace. You’re not alone.
posted by Belle | 10:09 AM
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