Ranan has begun work on a new performance piece doubly inspired by the life and music of Beethoven and portions of Vikram Seth's novel, An Equal Music. The working title for this piece is A Letter from Julia, and has two letters as initial impulse points:
- The first is from fiction: a letter written by Julia – a pianist coming to terms with her growing deafness – to her fellow musician and lover Michael, in Vikram Seth’s novel, An Equal Music.
- The second is from life itself: the effusive and emotional letter – known as the Heiligenstadt Testament – written by composer Ludwig Van Beethoven to his brothers as he deals with his growing deafness.
This page will feature images, videos and notes on the creative process of making this production. Responses are welcome.
an extract from An Equal Music.
Ranan members were given separate sections of the text and asked to improvise a short piece consisting of both text and movement - watch related video.
Dearest Michael,
Yes, it is true. You would have found out sooner or later, and, through our meeting in the park, it’s turned out to be sooner. Luke was very upset, and it was clear that you too were shocked about something. When we got home he told me that he had told you. He didn’t mean to let it slip. Poor Luke: he was glum for a whole hour. He felt he’d betrayed me when really he’d taken the burden of divulgence off my shoulders. He’s usually very protective of me and when his friends come over he makes sure that everything is completely natural. He doesn’t want anyone, least of all his friends, to have any inkling that anything at all is the matter with me. But a lot is the matter with me, I’m afraid – and I’ve been afraid to tell you, afraid that it would break things somehow, or break into things. I did not want you to feel that we were on anything but equal footing. Certainly I didn’t want what I saw in your eyes two days ago.
I did not think at first that I could live through it. Music is the heart of my life. For me, of all people, to be betrayed by my own ears was unbearable.
At first, I didn’t realise anything was wrong, though people seemed to be mumbling a lot, especially on the phone, and I began to sense that I was using a heavier touch on the keyboard. I wondered once or twice why I didn’t hear the birds sing so often, but assumed that that year in New England we were having a quieter spring. I wasn’t playing with other musicians at the time, so catching my cues was not an issue. And when I listened to music I simply turned the volume up.
It probably was getting more difficult for me to hear the piano, but so much of what one hears is in the mind and fingers anyway. The truth of it is that I don’t think I understood what was happening. How could I imagine that I was going deaf in my twenties!
The treatment was heavy doses of mixed steroids and immune-suppressants. It was just horrible. I looked in the mirror and saw someone bloated with drugs and desperate with fear.
For a while my hearing stabilised, even got better. But when they tried to taper off the drugs, things not only reverted to what they’d been before but got worse. Finally they managed to get me off steroids, but my hearing was shattered – is shattered. It was a strange transition from the world of sound to the world of deafness – not soundlessness, really, because I do hear all sorts of noises, only usually they’re the wrong ones. I feel as if I’m muffled in cotton-wool, and without my hearing aid I can hear almost nothing clearly. Then suddenly things bang out at me or I hear an unearthly high whistling. That’s how it’s been these last two years. I have my good days and bad days, and sometimes this ear is better and sometimes that, but I no longer have any hope that my hearing will return.
I threw myself into the foreign world of the deaf: preventive speech therapy classes, lip-reading classes with hours of practice before a mirror; even a bit of sign language – which I’ve never really used. Learning anything takes so much time, so much effort – especially something you need just to be able to function as well – half as well – as you could before. It was difficult for me to summon up the will-power to do it. But, as I told myself, music is a language, German and English are languages, reading the hands and lips are just languages – where one improves one’s skill with time and effort. It could be interesting. It was, it is, exhausting, but I’m much better at it than I ever thought I would be. At any rate, I took to it like a natural. But, as one of my teachers pointed out, you will never be able to learn from the lips alone if someone has lost her glove or her love.
I have learned to judge – from the bow, the fingers, the change of posture, the visible up-beat of breath, from everything and nothing – when to play and at what tempo. I knew from the past how to read your hands, your eyes and your body. I couldn’t hear much of what you played, yet I could tell that you played well. And when you lent me the Beethoven Quintet, I didn’t listen to it as in the past I would have. I put the bass on high, and half-heard the quintet, half-sensed it through vibration, as I read the score with my eyes. I got a great deal from it. But I know I will never truly hear what I have not already heard with these physical ears and can somehow revive in tune and texture from my memory.
When you heard the robin sing the other day, what I felt was not just humiliation, it was a sense of bitter injustice and deprivation and grief and loss and self-pity all mixed up in a frightful lump. And then you went on to talk of blackbirds and nightingales. Really, Michael, now that you know I’m deaf you had better amend your remarks so that you don’t pierce me so neatly to the heart.
An Equal Music
Pgs. 149-153
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