Storms, volcanoes, avalanches, and even the Apocalypse itself—these are the metaphors from nature that were used time and again to describe Franz Liszt’s playing, according to New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. Liszt was a showman. Thinking back on his own experiences with live performers, Ross recalled only one who possessed a similar power: the free-jazz pianist and composer Cecil Taylor, who gave Ross the feeling of being so engulfed in sound that he nearly drowned in it. Awash in sound and even giving yourself over to it, because isn’t that what drowning is? Surrendering?
While reading Ross, I too remembered a feeling of drowning—not my own feeling but one I had imagined on hearing a news report in early April. It was about a family of Spanish tourists killed in a helicopter accident when the aircraft lost its rotors and plunged into the Hudson River. The six accident victims were a husband and wife, their three young children, and the helicopter pilot. What did I imagine, exactly? Not pain, or fear, but desperation. Only twice in my life have I been in danger of drowning, but desperation that is akin to drowning seems very familiar. Yet I cannot describe it, only recall it vaguely as a tightening in my chest that doesn’t let up.
The helicopter tumbled through the air as it fell into the water. The rotors, which had spun off the top, floated down onto the surface. For the occupants, what were the sounds of the day? Of the fifteen minutes airborne over New York? Of the helicopter breaking up? What went through the minds of the six occupants securely strapped into their seats? The deceased woman’s brother, who traveled from Spain to identify the bodies, said that the family went with smiles on their faces, and a photo on the internet shows the grinning family beside the helicopter just before climbing in. Or did the man mean go as a metaphor for dying? I assumed so, and thought that positing a smile was ridiculous. But what do I know of dying? No more than he. No more than Tobias Wolff, who, in his short story “Bullet in the Brain,” has his protagonist, Anders, recalling in his last milliseconds of life a moment from his childhood when everything was new and fresh and something as simple as the sound of words was enticing. He was an embittered man, but his last instant was not for a gripe or a regret but for the music of a fellow ballplayer’s accent, the beauty of it. Maybe he too was engulfed in sound.
