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Hearing voices
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| Sunday noon with Mozart from the radio*. I'm having a late breakfast with freshly fried ham and egg, coffee and orange juice,
solving the newspaper riddle on my knees. The piano concert was lovely,
but the ensuing symphony... After some time I witnessed a silent
comment in my head: I heard that all too often. Maybe Mozart wrote this
one more symphony just for the money. But couldn't I say more about
this comment? |
| I began to think about it, and I found out: I could. |
| I have chosen my words with
deliberation: "... a silent comment in my head". On closer
thinking I even managed to peek into this internal private theatre of
mine. More specifically it was my father speaking, I found out to my
surprise. His face and his voice appeared before my inner eye and ear. So, it
wasn't meant to be my true opinion, was it? Was it possible that
still I had my own opinion on the subject, not identical to his? |
| I was confused. |
| Maybe it wasn't such a healthy habit to scrutinize my own thinking down to the naked bones.
But If I remember well the psycho-analysis lectures I took, the
identities of our closest relatives preceded our own. Only at an age
between one and two, we discover that we have our own agenda to follow.
Our first thoughts about what is going on may have had other actors
than ourself. |
| Even in our adult years, our
identity may still and always be some kind of composite identity,
forged out of several influences during our development. While thinking
about these ideas, several more voices and faces come into my mind:
friends, further relatives, colleagues, even individuals I never met in
person. Wouldn't you be confused too, finding out that you were many? |
| But luckily, confusion is a transitory state. Did I forget that a human being never stands alone? Neither did we come along into this world on our own decision, nor were we able to decide alone about our first steps. We always followed hints and voices, and if we listen well enough, they are still there. If we succeed in making sense of all these influences, we may turn into a reasonable voice ourselves, a voice in the heads of those we influenced. |
| It's not that I am hearing voices all the time. If so, I probably would need medical assistance. |
| *Piano concert KV 595 & symphony KV 550 (29.1.20 Großes Festspielhaus SZB, Lahav Shani) |