No Satori: Living Between Noise and Silence
“Our ability to attach layers of memory to sound makes us human.”
I know exactly how to proceed. Carefully, I lay myself down on my childhood bed—mattress from 1978, sheets from 1986—and put on an expensive pair of Audio-Technica headphones I’d been saving against the day. Jascha Heifetz, back in 1952, in Hollywood, plays Bach Partitas for Solo Violin. It’s vertiginous, sinister, and somehow a kind of duet, the way he plays it, a dance at the edge of a cliff.
“That’s the wonderful thing about Bach,” an old writer once told me, when I said I’d gotten into the habit of waking up to the Partitas. “He heals you.”
It sounds like Jack eating celery
challenging time
kindness
act
please
do
sure
This fat woman gets stuck on the toilet. Her husband says “I’ll call the plumber.” He gives her his derby hat to put over her lap, for modesty. The plumber says “I can get her unstuck, my friend, but the guy in the derby hat is a goner.”
“There’s one of them, the angry one who’s fainter than the starling.”
John Cotter is author of Under the Small Lights, a novel. Find John on Twitter @smalllights.
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author John Cotter
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author John Cotter
More by this author
Shocked Quartz: Traveling with a Chronic Illness
Will the vertigo again become acute? Will the stress of this, or some root cause that spurs it, end my life before it might otherwise end?
More in this series
To the Next Young Black Woman Facing Breast Cancer
“I’ve fervently wished to see women who look like me and have lived through this.”
Premature Baby, Preexisting Condition
“I am terrified that one day we will not pursue a treatment our son needs because we can no longer pay for it.”
Taking Charge of My Story as a Cancer Patient at the Hospital Where I Work
Being an “interesting” patient who also happened to be a trainee made me a morbid little celebrity.