Suffering for art.

When I was a young man, with that fresh-out-of-college smell still on me, I was on a self-improvement kick. Having neglected everything in pursuit of my degree, and in pursuit of having fun as I pursued my degree, I tried to make my mind more well-rounded and my body less so. I took up running. I started reading great books without a professor forcing me to. I studied philosophy and economics and history. And one year, when the office tossed us out at noon on Good Friday, I went to a Good Friday service at a church where the choir was performing the Johann Sebastian Bach St. Matthew Passion.

I wanted to cultivate some knowledge of religion, but also knowledge of classical music, which like most American kids my age had been largely restricted to aborted piano lessons, school choral groups, and of course Looney Tunes. But because of this minimal exposure, and the fact that I thought I liked things I'd heard from Vivaldi and the rest of that crowd, I wanted to immerse myself in Bach's musical masterpiece.

I learned a few things that day.

1) Good Friday services with the complete Bach Passion run for three hours.

2) Three hours can feel like 300 hours.

3) It is apparently important to suffer right along with Jesus.

4) Despite having studies the origins of words, I don't know a single word of Latin when sung.

5) I am an unreconstructed ignoramus slug of a barbaric bozo upon whom the world's greatest music is completely wasted.

No thanks, Mr. Bach.

Every time I look back on that day, I think of Sinclair Lewis's novel Arrowsmith. The hero, Martin Arrowsmith, a young man with a powerful bent for science, is taken by fellow student Angus Duer to a classical music concert.

At supper Duer said abruptly, "Come into town with me and hear a concert."
      For all his fancied superiority to the class, Martin was illimitably ignorant of literature, of painting, of music. That the bloodless and acquisitive Angus Duer should waste time listening to fiddlers was astounding to him.  He discovered that Duer had enthusiasm for two composers, called Bach and Beethoven, presumably Germans, and that he himself did not yet comprehend all the ways of the world. On the interurban, Duer's gravity loosened, and he cried, "Boy, if I hadn't been born to carve up innards, I'd have been a great musician! Tonight I'm going to lead you right into Heaven!"
      Martin found himself in a confusion of little chairs and vast gilded arches, of polite but disapproving ladies with programs in their laps, unromantic musicians making unpleasant noises below and, at last, incomprehensible beauty, which made for him pictures of hills and deep forests, then suddenly became achingly long-winded. He exulted, "I'm going to have 'em all--the fame of Max Gottlieb--I mean his ability--and the lovely music and lovely women--  Golly!  I'm going to do big things. And see the world. . . .  Will this piece never quit?"

Unlike Martin, I was not particularly good at science, and I think I missed any of the incomprehensible beauty bits. It made me wonder what I had been doing my whole life to that point.

And I have avoided Bach ever since.

That's pretty much all I remember about it except for one thing, which is also 100% true. It had been a very wet, miserable April day, and the rain was lashing the church pretty well throughout the interminable service. Then, at three o'clock, just as everything was finished, through a narrow window behind the altar, I could see a sharp, piercing beam of the sun breaking through.