The only thing that unites us all

It's not common for the echo of an orgasm to spread thousands of miles away, but that was the case with a woman's spasms and twitches during a Los Angeles music concert that made headlines this month here in Barcelona and around the world.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
27 May 2023 Saturday 23:02
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The only thing that unites us all

It's not common for the echo of an orgasm to spread thousands of miles away, but that was the case with a woman's spasms and twitches during a Los Angeles music concert that made headlines this month here in Barcelona and around the world.

Behind the ecstasy there is a mystery. The identity of the woman has not been made public. She has not taken advantage of the opportunity to become famous on social networks or on television. There is some doubt as to whether she actually responded to Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony with “a noisy, full-body orgasm,” according to one witness, or whether, as some have speculated, she fell asleep and awoke with a spectacular fright in the hear a particularly volcanic score of the work's second movement.

Well, se non è vero, è 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 makes me orgasm. But I regret not being able to. I would be proud to have such excess sensitivity. Now, hairs on end: yes. Not a poem by Shakespeare, not a painting by Picasso, not even a golas by Messi assaults me with more sensory force than the music of Tchaikovsky or, among thousands of others, that of Billie Holiday, Mick Jagger or Amy Winehouse.

Neither the plastic arts, nor the literary arts, nor the football games compete with the musical arts, which are above all other human creations in their ability to arouse emotion. If I were told that for the rest of my days I had 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 enormous regret – football. I would stick with music.

I thought about it this week, even before I found out about the orgasm that shook the world. On Monday night I was sitting in front of the TV exploring the goldmine that is YouTube and after watching Bertrand Russell talking about an encounter he had with Lenin, and David Hockney explaining Van Gogh, and a 1960s interview with Brigitte Bardot, and a collection of Messi's greatest hits, with the command beeping in an interpretation by Anna Fedorova of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2.

I must have been influenced, I suspect, by the fact that I had just been to heroic Ukraine, and that Fedorova is a young Ukrainian woman who is performing in public today to raise funds for her country. Also knowing that Rachmaninov was Russian: healthy to remember that Russia is not only the country of Stalin and his heirs. But well, while I was listening to the pianist playing the second movement of Rachmaninov's work, I was transported I don't know where, but far, far away from the everyday banalities that threaten us or from the imperishable human cretinism manifested today in phenomena like the of Putin or his mercenary boss Prigozhin or, on another scale of depravity, Donald Trump or – I'm 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 assume would be an encounter with a divine appearance. The convulsions were not physical but mental; the cries did not come out of the mouth, they resonated in the soul. My silence contrasted with the flood of sounds that entered my ears and flooded my brain, erasing all thought other than the second movement of Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2. And, yes, my hair stood on end, this uncontrollable and mysterious human reaction to the presence of the sublime.

Now, be warned, lest anyone think that my tastes are limited to the elite of classical music, about which I actually know little (although I do know enough to believe that Beethoven's Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth Symphonies are absolutely unsurpassed as inventions of human ingenuity). I'm also moved when I make the YouTube jump from Fedorova to Phil Collins playing In the air tonight live; to the splendid, late Tina Turner giving everything to Amsterdam with her anthem The best; at Foo Fighters' Everlong at Wembley; in the "white Zulu" Johnny Clegg singing Asimbonanga with Mandela dancing beside 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 music. In my humble way I have dedicated my whole life to gathering and selling words. But I surrender to composers and singers and piano virtuosos and violinists and guitar virtuosos. (I neglected to mention Paco de Lucía among the gems available on YouTube. Look him up). One of the greatest writers of all time, the Polish Joseph Conrad, born, I have just discovered, in the Ukraine, also surrendered.

In the preface to the book El negre del Narcissus, Conrad writes that music is “the art of arts”. Because? Because it transcends all languages ​​and cultures, because no knowledge is needed 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 which, therefore, is more permanent , more durable. It appeals to our capacity to enjoy and surprise ourselves, 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 creation that exists in us - and to the subtle but indestructible 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 with each other, that holds humanity together – the dead with the living, the you live with those not yet born”.

Phew! Almost music, these words, right? Almost the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, or Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. But not even Conrad gets there.