Taking the Indirect Route to Thinking About the Unthinkable

How much brain space -- and what kind of brain space -- are we humans capable of giving to certain particularly horrific risks we face?

Sunset - Madeline Island - January 2019

During the 3-1/2 years I lived on Madeline Island, I took dozens of pictures of surreal, beautiful sunsets. But the one above was a little too surreal. When I saw it, I thought, "Could that be something awful happening hundreds of miles to the south of us, in the big cities of Madison, Milwaukee?"

It reminded me of a dream I had had a few years earlier, when we were still living in Berkeley: 

Last night I dreamed that I was driving home into the Bay Area from a long trip, and I saw the mushroom cloud. ... It had really happened.  ... "What will happen now?" I wondered. "Will it reach us here?" 

I didn't have a very practical idea of what to do ... other than to keep on going.

My dream from there: traversing unfamiliar terrain ... bridge out ... try to "get back the long way 'round" .... ) 

When I woke up from that dream, I thought, "I'm involved in activism on the issue of nuclear disarmament and I talk with people about it and think about it all the time; but I've never envisioned myself actually dealing with a nuclear detonation occurring near me." And then I thought, "Am I capable of treating it like the real possibility that I believe it is?" 

I wonder if we are capable of treating the threat of nuclear weapons use like the real possibility that it is without shutting down intellectually and emotionally.

I'm thinking of this today because, as I unpacked papers in our new home in Madison, I found notes I had made about a piece of music: Symphony No. 15 by Dmitri Shostakovich. My notes reminded me that I have surmised that the clue to this enigmatic final symphony of his is that it has something to do with the fate of humanity in the face of the nuclear threat. I have nothing to base this on other than the "story" that the disparate parts of the symphony speak to me. In particular, the last minutes of the symphony seem to come down to the sound of a clock ticking . . . and then silence. (The way it ends with a whimper, like the sound of time running out, reminded me of the climax of a later work -- the opera Dr. Atomic, by John Adams -- in which the Trinity test is about to happen and time e-x-p-a-n-d-s . . . . in an excruciating type of anticipation: what will the future hold - if anything?)

Shostakovich wrote No. 15 in the 1970-71 period, coinciding with the SALT talks on arms limitations. It would not be unreasonable for the issue to have been on his mind at the time.

Once I start thinking in this way, I hear all kinds of things in the course of the symphony: skeletal xylophones, a game of "chicken" evoked with the William Tell Overture, martial music, circus music, a piccolo "whistling past the graveyard," a funeral chorale, a dirge, a desolate landscape, funereal and tentative steps, a heavy quote from the Ring Cycle (is it the "fate" motif?), followed by a very light air that seems to say, "La-di-da, life will go on as usual," then stress, trudging, plodding, ... finally blaring brass and then that ticking clock.

Besides the Adams piece referenced above, I think the piece also has connections to the stormy Dies Irae in Verdi's Requiem, and to Britten's War Requiem. (A friend of mine has also suggested I compare it to Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Penderecki.

Shostakovich was depicted on the cover
of TIME magazine wearing his firefighter's
helmet during World War II.

 

It's almost certainly impossible to come up with "proof" about what Shostakovich intended with this symphony, and, if it were possible, that proof surely be subjected to all of the same doubt and refutation that every other aspect of Shostakovich's thinking has been.

What seems more important is what it means to me to find this meaning in the music. Why do I connect these abstract musical signals to this particular issue, the issue of nuclear weapons threat?

I think we need works of art -- just like we need dreams -- to help us work through the things we can't bear to position too concretely, too explicitly, in front of our eyes, full-on, in bright light, with sharp definition, at least not all the time. 

Maybe Shostakovich 15 has no direct utility to offer in the effort to avert the harm we face from nuclear weapons. But I do know that it -- like many other works of art -- serves to help at least one peace worker to continue to struggle to work through in his mind what to do about this staggering problem that we face.

Speaking of minds and imaginations, perhaps if I had more courage, I would follow through with my plan to concoct a Gogolesque tale of finding a yellowed letter tucked into a mildewed copy of Testimony in forgotten used bookstore in far northern Wisconsin . . . 

You have asked me about my intent in writing my 15th. Many people have remarked (rejoiced, even!) that I had not written another "programmatic" symphony. They're tired of my commemoration of historical events. 

They're right - 15 is not about an historical event, not really. But it IS about a true event. Even though it still lies in the future, is there any doubt that it IS going to happen? 

It started with a dream. You know I visited Berkeley . . . .

But who knows where that might have led?

Below is a link to the final movement of Symphony No. 15 by Dmitri Shostakovich. What do you think?