Cumulative Essay: On Forced Maturity

To me, music is a world of fascination because of the infinitely complex stories a single piece can tell. As I sit down to write this blog, I listen to the first movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2. This piece has been with me for years. It has seen me through everything from the worst of grief to the greatest of joys. Today, I choose to listen to it because its opening- the slow, ominous progression of chords building to a cataclysm of orchestral intensity- models perfectly how I view and experience what I am writing about today.

In my experience, life has struck me blindsided. Junior year hit with blow square to my throat- first a breakup, then the suicides, then a seemingly endless minefield of social ostracism and isolation. I was caught at my most vulnerable point; all my preceding life I had somehow remained unmarred by the depression, anxiety, self-harm, and family issues that plagued my peers. Now I was swallowed whole, with no experience to help me.

That's when Rachmaninoff began to creep into my soul. I would listen to it for hours on end- 20 chords, high- low, high-low, high-low- and and grip the worn leather of my steering wheel as the knot in my throat rose with each one until it came crashing down in a wave of music. Those chords told me what happened; they silently communicated the way my anxieties slowly built, brimming to the surface. They modeled the hair-pin balance I was on, and the shock that pushed me over the edge.

While most people would drown out those memories, I relished in them. Having found a conduit by which to channel my fears and tempestuous thoughts, I could retreat to a safe haven between my ears and work my way through the world that was spinning around me. In the worst of moments I had my music to guide me, to keep me sane and pull me together. I had music to give me strength to stand up and start building myself up again.




Many of the texts I have on my list have struck me in a similar way; the universal gauntlet each character endures, often the event that sparks the fire of their journey. Going way back to the roots of my childhood, one of my favorite book series was Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle (you may know it by its first book better, Eragon). Eragon, reared as a peasant farmer in the unforgiving mountains aptly named “the spine”, has his world turned upside down when his uncle is emptied of his marrow by two monstrous bird-like creatures. Devastated, this turns Eragon down the path of becoming a Dragon Rider; a journey filled with all the goodies- magic, flaming swords, dragons that can read minds, and the obligatory love interests that are actually century old elves living in “ancient forests”.

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang is awakened from a hundred year long hibernation to enter a world devastated by war between nations- a world where the entirety of his people have been killed off for a century. This is one of many things that boggles my mind about the series; how the creators pulled off incorporating genocide, of all things, into a childrens show. But they make it work. Beautifully. One harrowing scene shows Aang and his friends exploring the ruins of the Southern Air Temple- his old home- where he finds the decayed remains of his mentor surrounded by the bodies of dozens of enemy soldiers. This sight sends Aang into the “Avatar State”, a state of near unbridled emotional rage and raw, unfiltered power. Thankfully, his companions are able to calm him, but the reality of his situation is starkly exposed. A twelve year old boy, heir to an extinct culture, the sole hope of the world in the face of a Firelord intent on burning it to cinders.

So far, these examples have shown characters faced with abrupt disruptions in their lives; seconds, instants that changed everything. But in life’s two-faced schemes, change does not always come in a flashy way. After reading All The Light We Cannot See, I feel once again gripped by the intensity of storytelling and complexity of character that can be achieved on paper. Both of the novel's focal characters, Werner and Marie-Laure, are faced with the long haul; a long, drawn out uncertainty of war that puts every action and movement into question. Marie-Laure is numbly displaced from her innocent, boundaried paris childhood. Attached to the hip of her father, she is at first feeble and dependent; blind, she physically cannot make her way through a normal world without help, much less a war torn one. But steadily, the sky grows darker over her head as over years her father is arrested, her maid/caretaker dies from pneumonia, and she finds herself separated from her uncle while 50mm shells rain from the heavens and tear open the earth. Werner, a scrappy german boy orphaned by the coal mines, finds himself swept into the hysteria of the Hitler Youth. Adopted into their school, Schulpforta, he is immersed in a mania of propaganda hungry, authority pleasing recruits. All are being pressed to Hitler’s mold. Werner’s journey feels like an inevitability: When will he fall? The ceaseless pressures from the Nazi’s battle the fleeting whisps of his integrity. As he raises his arm straight in salute, he is haunted by the image of his brain-dead friend Frederick, beaten for standing against the status quo.

But Marie-Laure finds herself holding her own in a battle of will against a man who can break another with his silence; who endures five days of isolation in an attic while her city is sieged and keeps her wits about her. Werner, in the back of the Opal, covering the meter of the transmitter, hiding the existence of the transmission from his unit to protect them. Werner, who commits treason in order to save a young girl who pleads for her life over the airways. Two characters who endured a steady increase of pressure for years.

All of these characters had once lived protected by innocence. All of them came out the other side bare and exposed. Whether its a young twelve year old boy facing the genocide of his people, or a young girl clinging to a pear shaped stone left to her by her vanished father, characters are caught blindsided or in the clutches of unstoppable slow-tide of forces beyond their control. Life holds no favors; it forces us to freeze and our minds to numb so that reality can wash in. It forces us to shed the dead weight of our innocence- a heartbreaking metamorphosis. Only then do we have room to grow into maturity.

To anyone who is curious, here is the link to my recording of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No.2