It's rare for the echo of an orgasm to spread thousands of miles away, but such was the case for a woman whose spasms and screams during a musical concert in Los Angeles made headlines this month here in Barcelona and around the world.
Behind ecstasy there is a mystery. The identity of the woman has not been made public. She hasn't jumped at the opportunity to become famous on social media or on TV. There are doubts as to whether he really responded to Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony with "a loud full-body orgasm," according to one witness, or whether, as some have speculated, he had dozed off and awoke with a spectacular start to particularly loud music. volcano of the second movement of the work.
Well, if it's not true, it's ben trovato. But I prefer to believe that it is true. If it is a case of fake news, I swallow it, happy. No, I'm not about to confess that music gives me orgasms. But I regret not being able to. I would be proud to possess such an excess of sensitivity. Now, hair on end: yes. Not a poem by Shakespeare, not a painting by Picasso, not even a great goal by Messi assails me with more sensory force than the music of Tchaikovsky or, among thousands more, that of Billie Holiday, Mick Jagger or Amy Winehouse.
Neither the plastic arts, nor the literary arts, nor the soccer arts compete with the musical arts, which are above all other human creations in their ability to arouse emotion. If they told me that for the rest of my days I would have to limit myself to enjoying only one artistic expression, if I had to choose, I am clear that I would discard words, painting and – with great regret – football. I would stick with the music.
I thought about it this very week, even before I found out about the orgasm that shook the world. On Monday night I was sitting in front of the television exploring the gold mine that is YouTube and after watching Bertrand Russell talking about an encounter he had with Lenin, and Davidn Hockney explaining Van Gogh, and a 1960s interview with Brigitte Bardot, and a collection of Messi's greatest hits, I piqued the controller in Anna Fedorova's rendition of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2.
I am influenced, I suspect, by the fact that I have just been to the heroic Ukraine and that Fedorova is a young Ukrainian woman playing in public today to raise funds for her country. Also knowing that Rachmaninov was Russian: healthy to remember that Russia is not only Stalin's country and his heirs. But hey, listening to the pianist play the second movement of Rachmaninov's work transported me to I don't know where, but far, far away from the everyday banalities that haunt us or from the enduring human cretinism manifested today in phenomena like Putin's or his mercenary boss Prigozhin or, on another scale of villainy, Donald Trump or – sorry – Lionel Messi selling his soul to Saudi Arabia for a few more dollars.
If there had been someone next to me, they would not have noticed that I was feeling something that combined orgasm with what I suppose would be an encounter with a divine appearance. The seizures were not physical but mental; the screams did not come out of the mouth, they resounded in the soul. My silence was in stark contrast to the tide of sounds pouring into my ears and flooding my brain, obliterating all thought except the second movement of Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2. And yes, my hair stood on end, that uncontrollable and mysterious human reaction in the presence of the sublime.
Now, be careful, don't let anyone think that my tastes are limited to the elite of classical music, about which I actually know little (although I know enough to believe that Beethoven's fifth, seventh and ninth symphonies are absolutely second to none as inventions of the human ingenuity). I am also moved when I make the jump on YouTube from Fedorova to Phil Collins playing In the air tonight live; to the splendid, recently deceased Tina Turner giving it her all in Amsterdam with her anthem The best of her; Everlong of the Foo Fighters at Wembley; “white Zulu” Johnny Clegg singing Asimbonanga with Mandela dancing next to him; Mandela, who declares at the end of the song that music gives him, more than anything else, peace.
The truth is that I know much more about literature than about music. In my humble way I have dedicated my whole life to collecting and selling words. But I surrender to composers and singers and piano, violin and guitar virtuosos (I forgot to mention Paco de Lucía among the gems available on YouTube. Look him up). One of the great writers of all time, the Pole Joseph Conrad, born, I just discovered, in the Ukraine, also surrendered.
In the preface to his book The Black of the Narcissus, Conrad writes that music is "the art of the arts." Because? Because it transcends all languages and cultures, because knowledge is not required to interpret it, as is the case with literature or painting or sculpture. Because, as Conrad explains, “the artist appeals to that part of our being that does not depend on wisdom – he appeals to what in us is a gift and not an acquisition and that, therefore, is more permanent, more lasting. He appeals to our capacity for joy and wonder, to the sense of mystery that surrounds our lives; to our sense of compassion, beauty and pain; to the latent feeling of community with all the creation that is in us – and to the subtle but unshakable conviction that there is a solidarity that unites the loneliness of countless hearts, the solidarity of our dreams, of our joy, of our sadness, of our aspirations of our illusions, of our hope, of our fears –the solidarity that unites all men to one another, that keeps humanity united–, to the dead with the living, to the living with those who have not yet have born".
Whoops! Almost music, these words, right? Almost the second movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2, or that of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. But neither Conrad arrives.
