An analog for 2020:
Having trouble sleeping? Need some respite? Would restful music help? Go to YouTube. Search for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Surely, with a title like that, the piece must suffuse a room with elevator music, the sound version of a warm bath. You’ll find numerous renditions on YouTube, all pretty good.
But a warning if you think “moonlight sonata” is spa music: Sure, It begins with the sleep-inducing Adagio Sostenuto, but then Beethoven moves it into the transitional Allegretto, this latter section not really one to put you to sleep. You’ve been duped, big time, suckered in, given the old bait and switch. Moonlight becomes bright sunshine after the Allegretto. This moonlight thing isn’t going to put you to sleep. The piece explodes into the rapid Presto Agitato.
You can ingest all the valerian you want. You can take melatonin. Even drink warm milk. When the Presto Agitato hits your eardrums, you aren’t going to sleep. You will be agitated, your heart will race; your pulse will pound; your sleep will transition into the wakefulness of the Indianapolis 500.
Much of life is like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. There’s an occasional promise of quiet restfulness, a meditative OMMMMM, but then the interruptions come, sometimes producing racing hearts. This year began that way, not much going on in early January. Just a hint in an allegretto that something was going wrong in Wuhan and that some passengers on cruise ships were getting sick. And then we entered the Presto Agitato of March: a COVID-19 death or two in the Northwest, a case of the virus following a traveler home to Chatham County in North Carolina and the disease entering New York from Europe, also. And then riots, West Coast fires, hurricanes and tropical storms, and political anger boiled the blood like an egg on a car hood during an Arizona summer. Talk about agitato!
You don’t have to go to YouTube to listen to Moonlight Sonata. In 2020, we are all members of the orchestra playing Beethoven’s work.
Having trouble sleeping? Need some respite? Would restful music help? Go to YouTube. Search for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Surely, with a title like that, the piece must suffuse a room with elevator music, the sound version of a warm bath. You’ll find numerous renditions on YouTube, all pretty good.
But a warning if you think “moonlight sonata” is spa music: Sure, It begins with the sleep-inducing Adagio Sostenuto, but then Beethoven moves it into the transitional Allegretto, this latter section not really one to put you to sleep. You’ve been duped, big time, suckered in, given the old bait and switch. Moonlight becomes bright sunshine after the Allegretto. This moonlight thing isn’t going to put you to sleep. The piece explodes into the rapid Presto Agitato.
You can ingest all the valerian you want. You can take melatonin. Even drink warm milk. When the Presto Agitato hits your eardrums, you aren’t going to sleep. You will be agitated, your heart will race; your pulse will pound; your sleep will transition into the wakefulness of the Indianapolis 500.
Much of life is like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. There’s an occasional promise of quiet restfulness, a meditative OMMMMM, but then the interruptions come, sometimes producing racing hearts. This year began that way, not much going on in early January. Just a hint in an allegretto that something was going wrong in Wuhan and that some passengers on cruise ships were getting sick. And then we entered the Presto Agitato of March: a COVID-19 death or two in the Northwest, a case of the virus following a traveler home to Chatham County in North Carolina and the disease entering New York from Europe, also. And then riots, West Coast fires, hurricanes and tropical storms, and political anger boiled the blood like an egg on a car hood during an Arizona summer. Talk about agitato!
You don’t have to go to YouTube to listen to Moonlight Sonata. In 2020, we are all members of the orchestra playing Beethoven’s work.
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