Certain posts are unlikely to draw comments. This is one.Yesterday The Guardian published a heart-wrenching feature about a Twitterist who posted "a regret" and invited others to respond with their regrets. About 300 replied (a modest figure at Twitter) but it was their profundity that impressed - people who regretted great chunks of their lives and said so with great honesty. Notably:
"I regret accepting the first proposal of marriage because I didn't think there'd be any more."
"Not taking a job in Paris."
"I regret being scared all the time."
"That my mum died too young to see me turn from an ungrateful truculent teenager into a person and a father I hope she'd be proud of."
You can see why I'm not expecting an avalanche. The tiny Tone Deaf community knows a fair amount about its neighbours and it takes a very strong-minded (or extremely regretful) person to reveal such personal detail.
Besides there's the cliché reaction that ultimately says nothing: Don't waste time on regret. The point being that those in the Guardian feature lacked this robust option.
So what about me? Yes I regret getting a job where the sole attraction was more money. The magazine was failing despite my efforts, I was miserable for four years and, given my age, increasingly terrified I wouldn’t find work that would ease me pleasingly and rewardingly into retirement. God seemed to intervene. My manager abruptly switched me to an editorship which I’d been (unconsciously) preparing myself for the previous twenty years. Though I say it myself, I was a success. So not a “true” regret.
I expect silence to be eloquent. True regret is hard to live with (re-read the examples) and even harder to confess.
"Je ne regret rien", RR. Life is (increasingly) too short! Live in the present, with hope.
ReplyDeleteThere, you have at least one response.
Avus: The open-windows-in-winter and cold-bath response. If it were that simple I'd never have done the post. Besides which suppressing unhappiness often causes it to pop up in some other more malign form. Hiring a van might be one such reaction.
ReplyDeleteDo you think the person (gender unknown) who uttered the first "regret" I list would have been helped by your breezy exhortation? As to prescribing hope it isn't available in the supermarket. Unsupported by anything concrete it can easily be a synonym for delusion.
And do you truly believe that Piaf lacked regrets? She lived a most miserable life exploited by everyone. It's a song, Avus, not a viable philosophy.
But thanks, anyway, for the comment. Perhaps you are the swallow that prefaces the summer, even if it is the wrong time of year.
Um...feigning illness to avoid school at the age of 12 - and pressing on with the ruse until I was hospitalized for a week. Pretty sure that was brutally worrisome for my parents AND the family budget. My Dad brushed on the problem when he called me "A goddam section 8", and I was asked several times "Is there anything wrong at school?", but in the end I chose liver biopsies over introspection. I hope I'm better now.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: You've got the point. Regret is to do with choice. One doesn't regret catching cancer because choice was never an option. Regret is usually confined to decisions which may have seemed right at the time, but have since proved otherwise.
ReplyDeleteBut you may well ask yourself how well-equipped you were, aged 12, to arrive at morally correct decisions. Introspection isn't always wrong, often it's a sign of adulthood. I spent some time trying to come up with a moment of true regret in my life and, in the end, failed to do so as my post shows. I am not convinced my life has lacked regret; I suspect I didn't dig deep enough.
Deep enough, perhaps, to discover that excessive introspection may be bad for you.
Ah, the Little Sparrow. But I am not French. In the German, das Leidwesen is 'regret.' It's a heavy word. Not like in RSVP ... a breezy sorry, can't make it.
ReplyDeleteIn my current genealogical haze, I feel that the regrets of my ancestors are why I am standing here today.
You cite true regret, lieber Robbie. And beginning to read your post, it washed over me before I reached the end of your second sentence. My one true regret. I have to live with it. It weighs on me. And on a night like tonight, I relive that day. I was 17 or 18 and should have said what was on my mind. What I felt in my gut. To the woman who bore me. But I didn't. And we'll never know how life would have differed.
Decisions. Choices. Mixed with time. It's a dastardly cocktail, isn't it?
I have regrets but would never share them. Mostly they involve the idiocy of youth. I'm a child of deep South parents, so I am a mistress of guilt and can feel it over minor things from many years back. On the other hand, all of that is probably grist for my mill in some way I don't quite understand.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I wouldn't mind having skipped graduate school. But then I would not have had the fun of teaching, throwing away tenure, and bumping into my husband. So that's all right.
RW (zS): A heavy word, that's it exactly. In fact you could say I now regret posting this subject. I didn't really want you to suffer as I feel you have in contributing here, both historically and more intimately with your mother. I titled this post Inescapable but I could have - more fiendishly - called it Ineradicable. That's the worst aspect of true regret, time and circumstances combine to ensure it may never be erased. To add to the poignancy that "wrong" decision on which the regret is based is often taken quite casually.
ReplyDeleteMarly: As is your talent you've brought another truth to these reflections: "but would never share them." Indeed. But you are hard on yourself with "the idiocy of youth", might I suggest "the innocent ignorance of youth" instead? There's a whole novel waiting to be written called Mistress of Guilt. Perhaps you've already created it in fragments and scattered it through everything you've written.
Certainly you've performed a salutary service for me. I mentioned in a re-comment that I had difficulty finding a "true regret" in my own life even though I was sure there'd been plenty. One arrived as I read your comment, a tiny thing between my mother and myself when I was no more than nine. The memory is as sharp now as it was then. I have no wish to share it although I can rationalise that refusal by telling myself it would take at least 500 words to include all the nuances. Even then I wouldn't want to share it. What a crying beast I was.
I carried them around with me, my bag of regrets, until it got too tedious. I am sure I did a couple of mean thingsm(in retrospect, not so mean compared to some), and I lied to get what I wanted when I was young. Occasionally.
ReplyDeleteBut my life was always too fabulous to regret anything. So. Chucked them out. But one keeps coming back in my dreams from time to time as a film sequence, showing me climbing off the operating table and walking to a phone (there was no phone), calling a taxi to take me out of there. It wasn't like this, I was already sedated, but I could write the film script as if. Something about body memory.
Sabine: My initial reaction was I too had led a fabulous life and any regrets had to be piffling. All the "big" desires of my life were met. I wanted a job in journalism and my father arranged this. I was sexually miserable in my hometown, moved to London, and quickly met and married the woman who is still - after 57 years - my wife. I wanted to work in the USA, a difficult project, and I contrived to organise this. My return from the USA to the UK (and thus needing work) couldn't have been simpler due to a long-standing friendship. Later, when my professional expectations took a nosedive I was magically transported to a job where I could shine. Willy-nilly I moved into a financially comfortable retirement. In the meantime my two daughters now have well-paid jobs which they find entertaining.
ReplyDeleteA broad view of my past suggested I had no regrets. But journalism has taught me that monoliths in personal existence are not always what they seem. As I mention in my re-comment to Rouchswalwe a tiny but hideous moment re-surfaced within the last few days. Its immediate impact lasted no more than half a day, I was young so possibly I deserved forgiveness. Never mind, I let down my mother and we both ended up in tears, at a time when my mother's life was proving to be unbearable for other reasons.
That memory is hugely painful and yet I am - in some crazy way - relieved. A life without regret would be unnatural, it would mean I had always been right. Or, more likely, that was the impression I was using to protect myself.
My dreams regularly dwell on minor matters which I realise I will be unable to achieve. One interpretation could be that they refer to hidden dissatisfactions which I have suppressed. And I do believe that to suppress something unpleasant merely transfers it to another location or another form.
Your dream is strange. I can't entirely see it as regret. But perhaps it is regret in another form. Thank you for contributing.
Interesting that you make a connection between getting older and resurfacing of memories/regrets (if I read this correctly).
ReplyDeleteThere has been a considerable body od research regarding wartime trauma and old age depression in German men of certain generations. Not that I would lump you into that lot. I proof read some of the papers prior to publication and the general drift is not the wartime trauma as such but the seemingly striking inability of certain generations of men to experience and relive and thus compensate negative emotions and actions, unless prompted and guided. Which is when coping mechanisms can set in. But mostly the male psyche seems to avoid this. Hypotheses abound. The researchers were of both genders and who knows how many of them had a cranky depressed granddad at home.
I am not going to insinuate an open gender difference (never!) but the findings were significant.
Sabine: Although I've spent the last forty years arm-wrestling the French and their language, I have a quite different relationship with Germany and with German. Far closer to affection, I'd say. Probably one result of spending a fortnight with a German family in Hattingen-Ruhr a mere eight years after the war. Sustained, more recently, by visits to German Christmas markets (Düsseldorf this year) where the attraction is being among Germans as much as the markets.
ReplyDeleteAdmiration also plays an important part. It's a pity that Triumph of the Will, as a title, is tainted given that it characterises the superhuman efforts Germany has made to rehabilitate itself post war and to emerge as an exemplar nation in Europe. This tends to be forgotten, especially in Britain where we still daydream about what we imagine are the good bits of WW2 and our pathetic triumph in 1966.
Your most recent comment shows that rehabilitation wasn't without its costs. I sympathise with those who are still undermined by the effects of the war, then and now. Depression is experienced at different levels, not all of them demanding external help. The unpretentious word "coping" is much more comforting to my mind than the psycho-babble. These days I wake up mildly depressed, the reasons hard to isolate. I used to think that writing was the best specific but now that isn't enough; there needs to be evidence of creative imagination at work. And that's a sometime thing. Otherwise one is simply employing words as a recording tool.
Singing, with its links to the great classical names of the past, also helps. You won't be surprised to hear that, for me, singing is most fulfilling when the words are in German.
In Dom da steht ein Bildnis,
Auf goldenem Leder gemalt;
In meines Lebens Wildnis
Hat's freundlich hinein gestrahlt.
Heine wrote the words but Schumann set them to music and he knew what it was like to be unsure.
Ach, Robbie, now you've got me singing along ...
ReplyDeleteRW (zS): Learn the Pamina bit in this great duet (it'll only take about six years) and I'll fly over and record it with you.
ReplyDeletePAMINA
Bey Männern, welche Liebe fühlen,
Fehlt auch ein gutes Herze nicht.
PAPAGENO
Die süssen Triebe mit zu fühlen,
Ist dann der Weiber erste Pflicht.
BEYDE
Wir wollen uns der Liebe freu'n,
Wir leben durch die Lieb allein.
PAMINA
Die Lieb' versüsset jede Plage,
Ihr opfert jede Kreatur.
PAPAGENO
Sie würzet unsre Lebenstage,
Sie wirkt im Kreise der Natur.
BEYDE
Ihr hoher Zweck zeigt deutlich an,
Nichts edlers sey, als Weib und Mann.
In the interim, and rather less exhausting, try this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqtPHFiHV8c&list=RDGqtPHFiHV8c
This has been the highest point of the many high points of learning to sing. Not that I'm anywhere near perfect (or even just competent) but I am able to tell myself I'm pointing in the right direction. Note particularly the ascending sequence of notes that accompanies "Lebenstage" - bliss when I get it right.
Mozart is of course Austrian but he is at least a German speaker. Schikaneder, who wrote the words, definitely German. Walter Berry who sings Papageno is, despite his name, Austrian as is (I've just discovered, this very moment) Gundula Janowitz. The conductor, Otto Klemperer is German. While the orchestra - Philharmonia - is British.
Can you imagine how I feel as I wait to swing into action after Pamina's glorious introductory lines (sung by V my teacher) - the weight of Germanic tradition behind me and an opportunity to sing in a language that has moved me so many times? How tragic Brexit seems.
We've got a long way away from "regret" here but perhaps we needed to.
I don't mind admitting that I deeply regret the two abortions which I chose to have, after much hesitation and against my better judgement. The first in my early 20s and married, the second in my early 40s and single. Nobody is to blame.
ReplyDeleteMistress of Guilt. Mmm.
ReplyDeleteWriters do tell the truth but tell it slant. Very slant. Impossibly slant. But to them it seems to be perfectly clear. Expect other people in the arts do the same--dance the truth, paint the truth, etc. But transfigured. Unless you are somebody like Emin, and then you just haul out the soiled, untransformed bed...
I was thinking about what Sabine said and remembering writer William Maxwell talking about old age and how things he had entirely forgotten came flooding back. So perhaps those memories come back more than we are given to know--more than most men would admit.
Hugs to Natalie.
♪ ♫ Ach ja, that ascending sequence of notes that accompanies "Lebenstage" gets me all tingly. I clicked on your link and sang along with Pamina ... it is a satisfying song. Ah, to sing on a rainy Monday eve! I understand your feeling well, swinging into action, lieber Robbie.
ReplyDeleteDear Natalie, I send you hugs, too.
ReplyDeleteNatalie: Your regrets mesh with many of those listed in the Guardian article. Genuine, inexpressibly poignant and - alas - irretrievable. As a man I am not qualified to offer the sympathy you deserve and - ironically - I regret that profoundly. Since even if you are not blaming anyone - and that becomes you - men were both involved and uninvolved. All I can say in supporting Pro-Choice (but from the sidelines, as I must) I believe that all further legislation regarding abortions should only be argued for and organised by women. The physical and psychological aftermaths of conception are such that men cannot truly speak with authority.
ReplyDeleteThere is, however, one shared experience in this. We do change, all of us, men and women. At 20 I was ill-equipped to make even small decisions, let alone anything as cataclysmic as you faced. At 40 when I suppose I was in what men are wont to call their "prime", I was equally unqualified but for somewhat different reasons. Fatherhood and its often severe problems brought me slightly closer to being an adult. I'd hate to be looking back to decisions I made sixty and forty years ago and trying to square them with the person I am now.
I very much appreciate your contribution. Yours is the type of regret I didn't expect to see here because it is so personal. Which is why the original Tweet and the Guardian's subsequent article were so powerfully touching.
Marly: I didn't really mean it, and if I did only in fictional terms. If you truly are a Mistress of Guilt you manage to wear it lightly.
The inner morality of writing is a strange place to inhabit. We use raw data that, in some cases, we wouldn't dare to allude to in its orginal context. We say we transmute, a fancy word for fibbing. That said my tendency is to use external truths only for illustrative detail, I am not one for recycling history en masse. For me the attraction is invention. Emin's bed is just a bed, it is uninvented.
Proust looms. I've read him twice and it was hard going. I doubt I have the necessary concentration to read him again, a penalty of old age. However one of the blessings of age is being able to think back and see A la recherche as a blurred panorama I wandered through. Saying to myself yes, yes and yes.
RW (zS): It is a delight to sing but initially it was strangely counterintuitive. Previous experience with singing simple sequences (as with hymns, etc) compelled me to reproduce the linked four notes as three notes - thus causing V to say "I only heard three." When I finally sang the four notes correctly it was exciting and that's how it remains. You cannot count the four notes as they happen, you launch into them and hope that prior tuition will get things right. From time to time I only manage three, reminding me that singing is different from engineering, even though I enjoy both.
I envy you being able to sing along with Pamina, especially her final twiddly bits interspersed with "reichen an die Gottheit an" sung twice by Papageno. Since V always sings these full-blast while what I sing is comparatively undemanding, I feel there is a limit to how many times we can rehearse this section in one lesson. And yet... and yet... the essence of duet is the thrill it generates, and that means going to extremes.
Thankyou for the hugs Marly and RW and thanks too, RR, for your response.
ReplyDeleteI've written about the first abortion in my online (ongoing) autobio and will write about the second one in due course. I don't know why, maybe it's a show-off tendency, but I have no problem with revealing most personal aspects of my life. I find the confession process both liberating and technically interesting - attempting to do it unsentimentally, as truthfully but also un-boringly as I can manage. If anyone's interested, the autobio starts here:
http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/autobio1.html
Ja, it's that linking thing. I have terrible trouble with aspirated consonants as it is, and being a Frankfurter, I tend to drop the endings of words. I don't know if I got the wonderful twiddly bits of Pamina's, but I certainly can full-blast! I do have a powerful set of pipes and I have fun singing in the car, in the shower, etc.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g75njNzzQNc Alma Gluck's Wenn die Schwalben heimwärts zieh'n. I stumbled upon it looking into my family tree, and it seems she was a superstar in the early 20th century in Cincinnati.
thank you for the autobio link, dear Natalie!
ReplyDeleteNatalie: "liberating... technically interesting... truthfully... unboringly". Steps towards that goal we all share (though some keep quiet about it) which is: to be read.
ReplyDeleteRW (zS): The first attraction of Alma Gluck's "Wenn die Schwalben...", for amateurs like you and me, is its speed. It is so delightfully slow. But with slowness comes further obligations. Here's a passage from Opening Bars, my account of my early singing lessons, presently being published.:
Critics who know their stuff and review live recitals and CDs provide the clue. The basis of a great performance often lies in the way professional musicians handle slow movements. Good technique – vocally or on an instrument – is more or less a given these days and technique alone may be enough with faster music. Slow music may be technically easier but interpretation and/or feelings will be more open to scrutiny and to attract comment. The foot-dragging beginner’s faults of intonation are thus only too obvious.
Another problem for me with old recordings like this is that they all sound just a teeny bit flat. It may be just an impression, I can't be sure, but I don't need any encouragement to sing flat and I have to stay away from anything that draws me in that direction. I looked for more up-to-date recordings and they all seemed to be non-vocal and played on accordions.
One further technical point. Yes the song is slow but it has some higher notes that would stretch me. Round about 0.46 and about 2.34 on the recording. By the way the next Alma Gluck song on YouTube (Ravel's Mon fils, in Yiddish) does allow rather more Efrem Zimbalist on violin.
Never mind. It's great to have a musical superstar in the family. And this is your first admission about the pleasure you take from singing (bath, car). Have you ever thought of finding a teacher who could increase this pleasure for you...? Who could tell you how to do Pamina's twiddly bits with absolute precision? Why not a trial first lesson, sometimes free?
ReplyDeleteYes,absolutely,to be read. And equally essential: to receive feedback, any feedback!
Lieber Robbie! Hmmm, I like the sound of that suggestion!
ReplyDeleteLiebe Natalie! We are having a long bank holiday weekend and I plan to read, read, read!
Liebe Rouchswalwe, merci beaucoup.
ReplyDelete