Sunday Pages: "Tabula Rasa"

A double concerto by Arvo Pärt.

Dear Reader,

Today is officially Day Five of this, my second bout of covid, which means five days after the first day I showed symptoms. Did Florida get me? Or did New York? Both? Does it make a difference? Because I got my booster last month—get boosted, Dear Reader!—the symptoms have been relatively mild. Every day I’ve felt a bit better. I’m a little congested, a lot tired, not particularly keen on eating, and too spacey to write anything coherent, but I will be fine.

I haven’t been up for reading, as that takes too much concentration; watching movies or shows, as that also takes too much concentration, plus it’s hard to look at the TV through the damned progressive lenses when I’m laying down; or talking to anyone, because it wears me out and also my voice is so low it’s like I’ve just gone through puberty. I’ve mostly been horizontal on the couch, in my mask, glasses off, squinting at the football games, raging at Elise Stefanik, clicking the “heart” icon on all the lovely well wishes on Twitter, and listening to music as I fall in and out of consciousness.

In my infirm state, I find that I only want to hear classical music. Specifically, the contemporary classical music of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Specifically, his double concerto, “Tabula Rasa.” I bought that CD maybe 25 years ago, after reading about it in the New Yorker (back in the days before social media, when that’s how I used to discover writers, musicians, and artists). The article—it might have been a “Shouts & Murmurs” brief—said that Pärt’s music was popular with late-stage AIDS patients in hospice. “Play me the angel music,” they would implore the careworkers. “Tabula Rasa” was the only thing that gave them comfort as they lay dying. Is there any higher praise?

Remembering that New Yorker article in my brain-fogged haze, and perhaps wanting to be dramatic, I figured Pärt was an appropriate soundtrack for waiting out the covid fatigue, and I’ve had it on repeat all week. The recording I’ve been listening to on Spotify has “Tabula Rasa,” “Fratres,” and Pärt’s Symphony No. 3. It is 58 minutes and seven seconds long. Three times over the past few days, I have started with the opening notes of “Tabula Rasa,” immediately fallen asleep, and came to just as the album repeated and “Tabula Rasa” began again. I don’t know what this means, if anything. Was my subconscious downloading the music? Had Pärt seized control of my biorhythms?

The first time “Tabula Rasa” was performed, in Tallinn in 1977, a composer in the audience remarked afterward: “I was carried beyond. I had the feeling that eternity was touching me through this music...nobody wanted to start clapping.” (You can listen to a recording of that performance here.) Another musician described it as “a declaration of silence, a manifesto of concentrating on important things.”

I don’t know enough about classical music to weigh in here. Also, I keep falling asleep when I try to listen. But maybe that is the source of its power. Music may not have the capability to cure an illness, but it can certainly heal the spirit. And in the end, that’s all that matters.