Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Requiem

This early spring evening I would say is looking quite bad. Quite bad, mind you, not that much really. A bit of rain, a bit of my balls are on the carousel for work, a bit of I have to renew my license and I have no desire to go alone to get a fucking appointment from a fucking ophthalmologist colleague who will say I've become nearsighted because in recent years I’ve jerked off too much. And perhaps he would be right. Because, after all:

"Man doesn't remain honest for long when he's alone, come on!"

And being alone on an evening like this, you find yourself flipping through, or rather, sniffing the pages of "Journey to the End of the Night" by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. And listening, long, languorously, to Mozart's Requiem. It's an old edition by Karl Böhm with the Wiener Philharmoniker. I miss the old Karl Böhm a lot. I miss his slow, flavorful, thoughtful approach to Mozart's music. An approach where moments expand, touching the eternal. Like in the bassoons and strings that start, frowning and ominous, the "Requiem Aeternam". And the clarinets, those clarinets, that gleam sinisterly in the oppressive, smothered fire, progression of the orchestra. Groping along in the bleak and decaying fog of the D minor, which only suddenly reopens, clears, thus, as if by magic, in the Introitus. In that brief and moving solo from which the soprano's voice emerges, clear and assured. A solo glowing of a faint warmth like the first spring sun. That sun that hasn't arrived yet but you know will come. Must come, indeed. The soprano's voice, the splendid Edith Mathis, singing clearly like a woman in love, her offering, her giving: "Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion".

Yeah. The hymn belongs to You, God. But for us, poor men on earth, what the hell belongs to us?

"And, as for me, by taking and leaving dreams so much, my conscience was at the mercy of the air currents, all excoriations and cracks, ruined to a frightening extent"

Let's reflect on that a bit, shall we. Good old Mozart was ultimately afraid of dying. And who wouldn't be? It's evident from the shattering "Dies Irae," an earthquake of conscience, now oscillatory, now jarring, where the spirit suddenly crumbles, the soul pulverizes into a sort of orgasmic shiver, "solvet seclum in favilla", and even calls on "David cum Sibilla" as witness. This "Dies Irae" lasts barely two minutes, I think. Two minutes that seem so eternal they create a world, only to incinerate it without purpose.

"Perhaps it's fear that most often is needed to extricate oneself from life".

And do I have it, the fear of dying, like Mozart? At twenty-eight, I've already had two attempts at ending it all. But I'm not a hero, I'm neither Kurt Cobain nor Ian Curtis. And, most importantly, the one thing that truly saves, I have Love. I have my very particular, sensitive, fragile, vulnerable, fiery, tender and ardent "modus amandi". Because:

"It's harder to give up love than life. You spend time killing or adoring, in this world, both at once. 'I hate you! I adore you!'"

Sometimes I feel alone, no doubt. I become rickety. I become encysted. I stand like a leaf on a tree in autumn, fighting in the battle of life, for my own, life. And sometimes I have fear too, oh yes. "Quid sum miser tum dicturus? Quem patronus rogaturus?" the soprano intones trembling in the finale of the "Tuba Mirum." Who will I call to help me? Who? Sometimes in bed, alone, I reach out for my solitude, searching for a hand, a hand that's not yet there.

"The sunsets of that African hell revealed themselves to be extraordinary. No one could take them away from you. Tragic each time like monstrous murders of the sun. A huge bluff. Only there was too much to admire for one man alone"

And sometimes the sunset is indeed too much to admire for one man alone. So much that eventually the lonely man gets fed up and doesn't even look at the sunset anymore. Turns off the light. Goes to bed at nine, "prostrated by the formidable resignation" of solitude, which leads you to consider the world "like a kind of Moon." Being a doctor doesn't serve much, nor do you think you should be the one to help others, not the others, you.

And then you're great, they say, a rare soul. Sensitive and fragrant like a flower bud.

"You could piss on those flowers, over there, and they would soak it all up! Besides, flowers are like men... And the bigger they are, the stupider they are!"

Sometimes you feel like that. Naked, vulnerable. And then you wrap yourself like a chrysalis in the contrapuntal fabric of the "Recordare", in that constant theme of man and woman, facing each other, in the interlacing of voices, bass and contralto, tenor and soprano, taking back, calling back, "tantor labor not sit cassus". You're there, and you tremble grossly, like a tree shaken to make the fruits fall. You reflect in the sublimated anger of the "Confutatis", or in the darkly aqueous crescendo of the "Lacrimosa". You're drowning, in that tear that refuses to come out. And in the "Lacrimosa", you know, Mozart's life drowns. At the eighth measure, on that "Judicandus homo reus".

Guilty of what, then? Not knowing how to suffice oneself?

"Asshole! I told myself then. In truth, you're someone without resources!"

In reality, if indeed each of us sufficed ourselves, if we were happy with him or her, just as they are, just as they are, we wouldn't need to pray. There wouldn't be the family. There wouldn't be society. Praying is asking for help, sure, but it's also expressing love. Escaping from one's own solitude, from oneself and one's own misery. Like in the fugue of the "Domine Jesu Christe", with its voices chasing each other, like in a game of mirrors, reflections, and echoes: "Libera eas de ore leonis, ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum".

One must live, this life, ultimately. Just live it. There’s no point thinking about it too much. Because

"Philosophizing is just another way of being afraid".

I breathe the silence between one piece and the next.

The thought crumples a bit more upon itself, in the wide convolutions of the "Agnus Dei". Wide spires that oscillate in the soul, feather that waves towards the floor, amidst the dust. Until the Communio. Of my love for her, and with myself.

"Lux aeterna luceat eis"

Enough, I don’t know if she's there, if she will be. But love, my love, it's there. For Her, for Me. And that's enough for me.

"Then suddenly everything becomes simple, divinely, without doubt, all that was so complicated a moment before... Everything transforms and the fearsomely hostile world suddenly rolls at your feet like a sly, docile, and velvety ball"

Note: All quotes are taken from Louis-Ferdinand Céline, "Journey to the End of the Night", translated by Ernesto Ferrero, Corbaccio, Milan.