“I hate feelings. I hate them!” said the person who feels them so intensely.
The feelings we hate are the ones that drive us into the dark corners and the basements of the psyche. The only thing worse than being in the grip of sorrow or grief is to feel nothing, or fool oneself into believing that the feelings aren’t there.
Ennui – a listless weariness and boredom – describes this hell.
Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, I listen to all the shouting of our time and feel that I’ve been there before. I prefer not to feel the loss of belief in history as the inevitable upward bend of progress. Listening to the sounds of ignorant armies clashing by night is not good for my sanity. I prefer ennui to constant turmoil, and, in the midst of ennui, I have nothing to say of any worth. No great word of hope.
“All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
or the ear its fill of hearing.
What has been will be again;
there is nothing new under the sun.”
-Ecclesiastes, 1:8-9.
In times like these I go through periods of great sadness and move into the protective shell of ennui. Then something like Odetta’s version of “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” breaks through again to the feelings I hate. Is it sometimes good to hate?
Views from the Edge 
Gordon, this is why I love my music so much. It is a retreat from the sense that we (America and much of the “civilized” world) are indeed regressing rather rapidly. We were incredibly lucky, I think, to grow up in an era when human progress seemed possible. FDR’s Great Society had begun and continued to help those who truly needed it. Then came Medicare, Medicaid, integration, and a new environmental awareness. It seemed that God might have been bringing conscience to humanity. Then the same kind of robber barons that ruled in the late 1800’s started planning their attack on all of this, and the society it seemed we were building now seems to be crumbling around us. So now I have thoroughly depressed myself, I think of the Bach B minor Mass, or Handel’s Messiah, or Schumann’s 3rd symphony, and an irrepressible smile creeps out on my face. I hope you will try to get the recording of Schumann’s Symphony no 3, preferably conducted by Sawallisch. I guess everybody needs to find their own ‘happy’ piece, but that symphony is such a tonic.
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Hi, Carolyn,
We’re on the same page. The Kidders’ musical appreciation is as I remember it: profound and sophisticated. I’ll listen the pieces as advised. Thank you for the friendship. Some things don’t change during a lifetime. Although my tonic is different at this age: gin and tonic, especially when I see Ted Cruz’s face!
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Reminds me of that song I listened to on a Marian Anderson record I can’t seem to find these days. Would try and sing along with it some days.
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Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, Paul Robeson, and another vocalist whose first name is Bess all sing this beautifully. The one by Bess is the best I’ve ever heard.
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Gordon, to put one’s faith in the upwards bend of progress takes more strength than I have. Sometimes I think of history as a great turbulent pool where the whirls and eddies sometime clear and other times obscure the bottom. But to sometimes discover truth and even goodness is possible. But it is hard sometimes.
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Dennis, The whole notion of the upward climb is based in a linear understanding of time and history that presumes the supremacy of the human species. I no longer believe that, but truth and goodness, fortunately, do not depend on the illusion of progress. In fact, I have come to believe that goodness and truth appear more clearly when the idealistic substitutes for God have died. Nietzsche’s Mad Man still has not been heard. Until he’s heard, the gods of western culture will continue to prey rather than pray. Thanks for your comment, friend.
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Just sent you a private email – probably crossed in the ether!
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For some reason it hasn’t come through. Perhaps you sent it through Facebook?
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