Part of the difficulty of dealing with death, and I suppose this applies particularly to Americans, is that if you haven't faced your own mortality you might come away less inclined to live. As I write this, I cannot remember the last moment I felt as if I should discipline myself to perfection. To discipline oneself to perfection is the proper attitude to life because there is such joy and inspiration in being a vessel of the perfection that is available to us. It is to submit to the highest will and thus gain orientation over one's own life and destiny. But I happened upon a biography on PBS this evening on Karajan, and it is music that is bringing me over to that kind of appreciation I once had for my own perfection.
Small perfections.
That was how I used to run my life. And I think of the short years after having read Ayn Rand and a moment in time when I was watching Jeopardy and calculating my own score as a fourth player while adjusting the others down and distinguishing Monk songs in my head, broiling New York strips and reading Moliere and falling asleep to CBS Mystery Radio. lt was the start of a new life for me in 1987, but I'd have to check my diary to be precise. I was looking to perfect myself because the order of things became apparent - I realized that I had wasted time trying to help others to do things that cannot be helped.
And I'm rather there again, because I've been saying "It's not about me", for several years.
The phrase in my head was "Civilization is where you put it." And for a young man with a vision of the digital future and quite enough nerve to assume a role in its creation, I was putting myself always up to the task. I discounted my surroundings and dedicated myself, and I was called arrogant and I liked being called arrogant. I only wanted to be clear-eyed and unafraid.
Karajan reminds me of what it must be like to be that vessel. To have such dedication to clear one's mind of clutter and to master, over all things to attain mastery and reach the point at which the answer is clear. He memorized concertos and operas and symphonies. He exerted his will to create. He dominated in order to perfect, to create a powerful harmony, to achieve an excellence. His is an expression of will I've not perceived since my appreciation of Yukio Mishima. It was Mishima who set me free to perfect in those mid 80s.
How one lives a life of compromise is a matter of inattention. It is by not having a vision that demands your perfection that you slip, human-like into your own smell. If you stay in bed long enough, you breathe less oxygen.
Life is too long, and it is too short, not to believe in self-perfection. We are fortunate that in youth it is done for us by the simplest unsullied application to our pure and genuine ambitions. But as life becomes long and we forget it becomes longer still to reapply without world-weary cynicism. That is why there is great God-given asymmetry in the ability to perceive and to produce. For all of Karajan's great dedication and perfection to his craft it only takes us an hour to hear and appreciate. For all many years of practice and discipline any man exerts, we have only to recognize it to be made rightly inspired. And greatest yet we have only to have faith in God to build a religious perfection in ourselves. To do otherwise is to self-destruct.
I am realizing the necessity of my discipline and my aim towards perfection. From God through Beethoven through Karajan to me.
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