I Am Not Jackson Pollock by John Haskell

Author:John Haskell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466894051
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

6. SILENT NIGHT

Glenn Gould was happy to admit it: he was a hypochondriac. There were the pills, the blood pressure tests, the constant worry, and there were also home remedies. When he felt a numbness along the left side of his body he thought he could cure himself, and his cure for the lack of feeling in his body was to go under water. Hot water. He ran hot water into his bathtub and took off his clothes, which left him standing on his small white rug with nothing but the translucent whiteness of his skin. That and the patches of hair. He then eased himself into the tub and, with a candle burning beside him on the toilet seat lid, soaked himself. Because the water was hot he had to lower himself slowly, putting his feet up on one end of the tub, his hands braced against the other. He gradually lowered himself, getting used to the heat of the water, his body going farther and farther into the water until finally he took a deep breath of air and then slid his whole head down. He kept it there under the water until he got dizzy, letting the heat penetrate into his brain, thinking it was his brain that needed blood.

One day he’s in his bed, books piled up around him and with him and he can’t seem to get to sleep. It’s daytime. Normally he sleeps during the day, and it’s day now, but he can’t seem to get comfortable. It’s his left side. It’s not his mind. It’s his body. And his ears. That’s another thing he worries about, his hearing. He’s worried now, not scared exactly, but he wants the feeling to go away, now, and when it doesn’t he feels that his body is acting against his wishes. He’s taken the pills that usually work and now they don’t. It’s his left side. Not his mind. It actually does exist. Not a big problem, he’s pretty sure, and tells himself it’s not that bad, but he feels—or doesn’t feel, that’s just it—he doesn’t have feeling on his whole left side. And yes, he believes that his life is lucky, and that his luck has something to do with his connection to music, and the purity of music. He feels connected to the world of music and protected by that world, and he expects to be spared. He tries to avoid this new, unwanted situation by turning again to music, by closing his eyes and invoking his music, by hearing the music in his head. He closes his eyes to hear it, but this time his refuge fails him. This time the music doesn’t come.

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