Deaf Beauty

About 2 years ago I was a guest writer on a blog asking me to talk about one of my happiest moments. The moment of "happy" I conveyed was of my experience singing with a chorale Beethoven's Ninth in college at a theater in Chattanooga, TN. (Unfortunately, I believe the link to my post no longer exists, thus I am unable to connect you to that post. Sorry!) That college experience prompted my curiosity in the person of Beethoven, a "mad genius" in some people's minds who created some incredible music. What I find even more incredible is that he wrote his Ninth symphony when he was, it is believed, completely deaf. (He went deaf in 1816. He wrote the Ninth Symphony in 1824.) How did he manage it? He sawed off the legs of his piano, placing it on the floor, and with his ear pressed to the floorboards, he "heard" the vibrations of the music he was working to compose. It is also understood that Beethoven experienced a difficult childhood as a result of his father (a court musician with an alcohol addiction) driving young Ludwig to be perfect in his practice and performances.

It makes me sad to think of Beethoven as a child being treated so badly, driven so relentlessly.

However, as so often happens, great art springs from great difficulty. Would we have Beethoven's Ninth if Beethoven's childhood had been happy? Would he have persisted and fought to overcome his deafness had he not fought early in life to overcome the cruelty of his father? Perhaps Beethoven was eccentric and flirted often with the line between madness and genius. But I'm not sure that any of that matters now. What matters is what was created out of all of that. What we are left with is, in my humble opinion, some of the most beautiful and impassioned music the world has ever encountered.

Beethoven himself hopefully serves as a reminder that no experience--however painful--needs to be wasted. No scars we receive condemn us to future scarring. We are who we are as a result of all we experience, and it's precisely that which informs what we create.

So, as National Poetry Month winds down, I want to share a poem about Beethoven - his childhood, his music, his genius, his persistence. It's a Spoken Word poem by Shane Koyczan, so it's supposed to be heard rather than read. However, it's always helpful for me to see the words in addition to hearing them. So the poem and a video of Shane performing his piece is below.

I hope you enjoy:

Beethoven
By: Shane Koyczan

Listen
his father
made a habit
out of hitting him
see
some men drink
some men yell
some men hit their children
this man
did it all
because I guess all men
want their boys
to be geniuses
Beethoven
little boy
living in a house
where a name meant nothing
living in a house

where mercy had to be earned

through each perfect note

tumbling up through the roof

to tickle the toes of angels

whose harps

couldn't hold half the passion

that was held in the hands

of a young boy

who was hard of hearing

Beethoven

who heard

his father's anthem

every time he put finger

to ivory

it was not good enough

so he played slowly

not good enough

so he played softly

not good enough

so he played strongly

and when he could play no more

when his fingers cramped up

into the gnarled roots of tree trunks

it was 

not good enough
Beethoven

a musician

without his most precious tool

his eardrums

could no longer pound out rhythms

for the symphonies playing in his mind
he couldn't hear the audiences clapping

couldn't hear the people loving him

couldn't hear the women in the front row whispering

Beethoven

as they let the music

invade their nervous system

like an armada marching through

firing cannonballs

detonating every molecule in their bodies

into explosions of heavenly sensation

each note

leaving track marks

over every inch of their bodies

making them ache

for one more hit

he was an addiction

and kings/queens

it didn't matter

the man got down on his knees

for no one

but amputated the legs of his piano

so he could feel the vibrations

through the floor

the man got down on his knees

for music

and when the orchestra played his symphonies

it was the echoes of his father's anthems

repeating itself

like a brok-broken recor-brok-broken record

it was

not good enough

so they played slowly

not good enough

so they played softly

not good enough

so they played strongly

not good enough

so they tried to mock the man

make fun of the madness

by mimicking the movements

holding their bows

a quarter of an inch above the strings

not making a sound

it was

perfect

see

the deaf have an intimacy with silence

it's there in their drams

and the musicians turned to one another

not knowing what to make of the man

trying to calculate

the distance between madness and genius

realizing that Beethoven's musical measurements

could take you to distances

reaching past the towers of Babylon

turning solar systems into symbols

that crashed together

causing comets to collide

creating crescendos that were so loud

they shook the constellations

until the stars began to fall from the sky

and it looked like the

entire universe

had begun to cry

distance must be an illusion

the man must be

a genius

Beethoven

his thoughts moving at

the speed of sound

transforming emotion into music

and for a moment

it was like joy

was a tangible thing

like you could touch it

like for the first time

we could watch love and 

hate dance together

in a waltz of such precision and beauty

that we finally understood

the history wasn't important

to know the man

all we ever had to do was

listen.