“I shall create a new world for myself.”
I was intimidated in youth by Chopin.
By other composers as well, surely…
but Chopin above all seduced and frightened me.
Chopin represented a fullness that I lacked,
that I could ponder but not understand -
like a lump in the throat symptomizing a crush
on a beautiful but unattainable girl.
So I shunned him for a number of years.
I would live life in search of my own plenitude
and return later on to compare mine with his…
not that mine would be beautiful like his
or grand. But I’d have a better understanding
of the life that granted us all those precious airs
by grace of having journeyed through my own,
creating a world for myself as he did his.