Sometimes I question whether or not I really know what suffering is. Reading back on my last entry, it struck me that in many ways, my life wasn’t that bad.
A Hero Of Our Time was written during great military conflict, where people were frequently “exiled” by being sent to remote places along the front of the Russian-Circassian War, where Russia had already been fighting for over 40 years. Some may argue that I don’t truly understand suffering, because my culture hasn’t been through something like this, whereas such pain is already in the blood of Russians. Even in popular culture, such as Babylon 5, the Russian character Susan Ivanova (whom I quoted in this tweet) seems to follow this stereotype.
So can I truly relate to this without having gone through any of it myself?
If you look at Aya Nagatomi’s performances of Chopin, specifically her interpretation of his Étude Op. 10, No. 12, you can tell that it’s technically amazing — certainly a virtuoso in the making as she’s only 19 in this video — but you don’t feel the rubato with which Chopin intended it. As such, it sounds like it’s being performed by a computer. You have to wonder whether it takes a certain degree of hardship experienced to do it justice, perhaps going through the political turmoil of the November Uprising in Warsaw that inspired Chopin to write this Revolutionary Étude.
Could Leonard Cohen have been able to pen a song like Famous Blue Raincoat without having suffered through a few lonely nights in New York City? I think not.
I don’t know enough about Chinese history to know what my ancestors went through. The relatives I know of in previous generations escaped the Cultural Revolution — where they would have been subjected to unbelievable hardships — to Hong Kong. Maybe it’s not in my blood, and I’m just drawn to the idea of Nihilism on a superficial level, never truly understanding it any deeper.
But a long time ago, I remember reading an entry by Tina where she felt disturbed by other people’s opinions on how jaded she was feeling, as they were saying she had nothing to feel bad about. I told her not to compare herself to others. That one person going through heartbreak is a different kind of suffering than a person going without food, and that one can’t said to be more “painful” than the other.
I may have been well-fed, healthy, and from a middle-class family in my childhood. But none of things mattered to me because it was the emotional connection that I was seeking, but could never find.
I’ve always had the bad habit of comparing myself to others. I should probably just follow my own advice and enjoy the comfort, beauty, and inspiration that Russian literature gives me.
After all, if I can acknowledge that my suffering is my own, no one else would truly understand anyway!
It’s funny you posted this now, since I just finished watching SHINE, which involves a gifted young pianist (albeit a bit odd) and his overbearing and abusive concentration-camp survivor father (cause of the oddness). The suffering the father experienced was completely warping; family-shattering. I don’t think anyone can really empathize with that if they’ve led a normal life. But his son suffers a great deal because of him, and that is more like most of us in our situations. His father constantly limits him from playing the Rachmaninoff concerto he dreams of.
I don’t think this girl is an empath. Period. Even apart from suffering, she hasn’t even listened to other versions well enough to give it her own interpretation. [And What the HECK was she thinking with that big clip in her hair. Ew.]
I don’t believe in the suffering of an artist being requisite to create art — a true empathy is, however, I think. (You have quite a bit of that.) And to just enjoy art, you need even less.
Does Tai Chi work better if you’ve experienced more? Or isn’t it about that?
I remember seeing Shine a long time ago. I personally do believe that some amount of suffering is required to create art. But only because I’m like that. There are definitely times where the other end of the spectrum inspires me, but it’s much less common for me.
I’m not sure what you mean by Tai Chi working better with more experience, but I hear that it does help to have been in a few fights to better understand the reasons for the movements.
I’ll have to say that you have been so blessed with all the good things in life…born and raised in a land of plenty, with all the freedoms gauranteed by law, i.e., both material and spiritual. Oh, I think a person going without food suffers more pain than a person going through heartbreak, even though heartbreak can sometimes be unbearably painful.
A Brit once said to me that North Americans could never produce the kind of art like Europeans do, as they enjoyed such plentiful lives. There may be a certain degree of truth in it.
I’ve never heard of someone killing themselves because they knew they were going to starve to death, but I’ve heard of suicide over lost love before. And yet the former is one of the essential things that humans require to live. That’s why I don’t think they can be compared.
Even the types of art are difficult to compare, but I could see how Europeans have created a larger body of work that deals with suffering. It’s hard to experience something like the holocaust without it affecting a culture in some way.