An Unintended Memoir: Forward to the Past

All my adult life I have had this dream, the sort of Man of La Manchaesque impossible dream that Don Miguel de Cervantes would have both understood and approved of. And now, in the closing chapters of my life, never having quite attained it, I find it amusing and instructive (to myself) to examine it again, perhaps for the million-teenth (to co-opt and employ American black colloquial alliterative word association) time. But before I share that dream with you, let me explain something regarding its background.

I recently stumbled across an episode of the PBS series titled ‘American Masters’ featuring Asian-American author Amy Tan, who is almost exactly 10 years my junior in terms of age. The title of this episode was ‘An Unintended Memoir’ and it stems from a book Tan published in 2017 with the title of 'Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir'. As usual when something has piqued my interests, I was immediately filled with resolve to acquire a copy of this book, which I did and pored over it, intently.

In this book, Tan delves into her own fascinating past and that of her ancestral forebears, employing the full, stunning range of imaginative and explorative intelligence that is born out so splendidly in the content of her books. But more importantly and at the intended core of this particular book, she examines the creative writing process that is the hallmark of her particular genius…an imagination that is just as much a unique talent as is singular musical ability, artistic brilliance and/or speculative, singular scientific inquiry of the rarest sort.

Early in the book, Tan references the important role that ‘good’ music (e.g. the classical European masters, such as those of the evocative Romantic Era and that any appreciator of Northern European music is likely well intimately acquainted with) played in herf life, going on to briefly describe her flirtation with the piano, an instrument that along with the violin is one of several most Asian ‘Tiger Mothers’ wish so desperately to imbue their offspring with a passion for, from their earliest days (the other two being violin and cello).

Tan admits to being a rebel of studied purpose when a child, with the result being that she loathed the hard work and perseverance becoming truly adept that the piano requires. As a consequence, today, as a mature adult in her 6th decade of life, Tan admits to possessing only an average keyboard talent but confides in us that despite her lacking the stunning brilliance of someone like Pianist Yuja Wang (the Chinese ‘Wunderkind’ of the keyboard) has such a gift for, she may not be able to put her feelings into her music with the same level of skill but her basic residual piano ability enables her to ‘channel’ (my term, not hers) music (especially that of the piano) and harness the emotional forces that drives it as a spur for her formidable imagination.

To my surprise and gratification, Tan confides in us that her absolute favorite classical Romantic Era piece is Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44, a fantastical work that few can listen to casually without being instantly swept up in a literal tsunami of powerful emotions that are totally irresistible. By happenstance, that is also one of my own favorite Rachmaninoff pieces. Perhaps that’s not necessarily a good thing, since virtually anyone and everyone who listens to it is liable to swoon over the immense passions and emotive synergies of the spirit that it exudes, with the explosive force of fire subsuming extremely sere wood. For Tan, given her unusually active imagination, Rachmaninoff’s brilliantly fiery piano concerto immediately catalysed a narrative in Tan’s mind, an almost novel-like story in which she identifies with her protagonist (a young woman who is drawn through a sequence of romantic experiences in her formative days).

Drawn out at some length, this passage of her narrative tended to lose me but fortunately, after a noteworthy dropping off of my previously heightened interest in what she had to say, she resumed the narrative of her book once again by going into more background on her Chinese origins (which are to me absolutely fascinating). That brief departure from the book’s main theme was for me a tangential excursion that I could easily have dispensed with, but I am not the author of that book, of course, hence…

Earlier, I mentioned Yuja Wang, the nubile young Chinese pianist. Listening to Wang play Rachmaninoff for the very first time is for many what I would imagine an unanticipated encounter with a shark would be like, while peacefully submerged in the stygian lower depths of an otherwise serenely pacific sea (something I am tempted to jestingly describe as “sharking…simply sharking!”…but I’ll manfully refrain from making such a profoundly juvenile observation) one moment…and the next suddenly jolted with a massive static electric discharge from one’s amygdala (the brain’s ‘fight-or-flight’ center) the next!

Yuja, aside from being a stunningly passionate virtuoso pianist whose boundless reserves of energy and musical scintillation seemingly know no limits, is also an extremely good-looking young woman who seems to have a purhaps subliminal, but purpose-driven sense of sartorial style in that she defies concert hall tradition by wearing dresses during her performances that sensually mirror the passion of her musical adeptness. With an abundance of leg showing, tight-fitting, exotically fanciful gowns and yards of bare skin in evidence, I have absolutely no doubt that that presses every single ‘passion’ button in most male concert-goers (and probably a selection of certain females in her audiences, as well).

I hesitate somewhat to add that last speculative morsal, since although she is very coy about discussing her relationships, seeming not to have any apparent boyfriends or amorous partners, yet the passions crying out from within her piano performances are unmistakable primal and even sexual. With her short hair and her vague demureness about possible romantic interests it would be easy to speculate beyond acceptable limits about her romantic attractions, but that’s somewhat beyond the thread of my thoughts in response to my response to Tan’s book. Suffice it to say that Wang possesses a musical passion that fires through her talented fingertips like high-voltage electricity from a high-performance engine’s coil (to use a poor but descriptive analogue).

Although Tan presumably wrote her 2017 book before she had conversant familiarity with Wang’s stunning virtuosity and regardless of that fact, Tan and Wang both possess a singularly unique, kindred gift: the ability to spin verbal and musical vignettes of sheer, unbridled energy from their vortices that catch up us more stolid, pedestrian proletarians and draw us like honey bees to flowers (I could have stated it ‘like flies to sh*t’, but that’s rather needlessly rude, isn’t it? Either way both analogs are equally apt in the final analysis).

Both Tan and Wang are, as I’ve previously alluded, comely, attractive women of Chinese ancestral origin. Both embody a shared drive to excel, achieving each in their own way and with almost equal virtuosity. And both are examples of part of what helps make women of Asian extraction so breathtakingly unique among all the women of the world.The externalised 'beauty' aspect is only frosting on a complex and fatally attractive cake!

As a very mediocre writer myself and one who lacks both the formidable, finely honed academic training in literature that Tan has (she took a baccalaureate in English and a grad degree in linguistics; she even entered a doctoral program but later dropped out to pursue her fiction writing career) or the effortless musical brilliance that Wang innately seems to possess in spades (I played a brass instrument from grammar school through my early college years and made California state Honor Band as a soloist, but that’s very likely more of a statement testifying to the mediocrity of my fellow soloists rather than the mastery exhibited in my performance), I can only marvel at the determination both have to excel spectacularly at their respective crafts, as they so perfectly do.

Of course, neither Wang nor Tan had an affliction known originally as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, now more commonly redefined by the DSM-5 psychologist’s bible as AD/HD, or Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), as I do. ADD is a bad enough affliction to have to work through if you have any pretensions of being an author, certainly, but theoretically not on the same order of magnitude as what Tan suffered from, Petite Mal Seizures thought to be symptomatic of underlying epilepsy (fortunately for her, fairly well-controlled by adept diagnosis and medical prescription). Of further significance, Tan was also diagnosed with a thyroid disorder early in her life, presumably also well-controlled through meds that she may well be still taking (I also have a tendency towards hypothyroidism, resulting from surgical removal of the right lobe of my thyroid after a biopsy of a small mass revealed a ‘cold nodule’ some 20 years ago, but also corrected by daily meds).

My point here (if any) is to remark on the fact that given the complexity and interrelatedness of a human body’s organic systems, all sorts of unanticipated effects may be brought to bear on a person so impacted…some that may in fact catalyse surprisingly positive assets or possibly synergise adverse deficits in basic functional living ability. It’s as predictable as the outcome of a card game (assuming it is played fairly and squarely with no cheating allowed).

But to continue, Tan’s most recent book (which she interestingly admits is evidence that for her, writing good books is getting harder and harder) is a fascinating insight both into her own singular formative experiences and that of her forebears. Speaking of her forebears and ancestors, her grandmother and mother were considered to be noted beauties in their prime, and photographs Tan presents to her readers in ‘Memoir’ readily substantiate and underscore this.

Tan’s father was an inveterate amateur photographer by her own admission and I found that to be another spiritual tie I share with her, since my own father, who passed away at age 72 or so (when I was only 4), was also a tyro photographer. His photographs remain one of the only links I have as to what sort of man my Da was and fortunately for me, despite his premature departure from my life far too early in it, they today constitute an invaluable documentary source that helps me better understand a missing father I barely remember in actual memory!

Naturally, I am convinced that most of what I actually think I ‘remember’ about him (after all, what does one remember about his or her sensations and impressions at such a tender age?) stems directly from my subsuming those visual traces of his life preserved on many small, rectangular, black and white outlines and shadows, forever etched into photographic paper.

I like to think that these small, static frozen moments from the past are more than just sentimental keepsakes. They are in fact important clues of historical significance, whether related to our personal lives or the society, culture and times we (and others who are close to us) have lived through and experienced. My strong feeling in this regard may well serve, as I reflect further on this, as an early motivation for my developing strong interests in history (and my own academic and experiential thirst for knowledge of what has gone before).

If what philosopher George Santayana’s famed remark about ‘remembering the lessons of the past so as to forego repeating history’ hold any water, surely these small relics of the bygone decades that today reside in shoeboxes and musty old photo albums hold valuable clues as to what has not just gone before, but more importantly, how we personally have been affected by past events. It’s a sort of analog paragon of the eternal ‘nature/nurture’ hypothesis.

One of the great tragedies of our age (one of a great many, I’m afraid) is that today’s younger generations are so hopelessly caught up in the vanities and materialistic narcissisms of ‘self’ that they completely abnegate (whether deliberately or inadvertently is always uncertain) any responsibility (or interest) for learning from the past…more so than any previous generations, in fact, to their eternal disadvantage.

Given all of the foregoing (and my obvious enthusiasm for Amy Tan’s explorations of her own past, so perfectly framed and amplified by her imaginative gifts in her books, I find that I am now brought to explain the ‘impossible dream’ I mentioned in passing, at the onset of this rambling discourse.

That dream would be one I have long had of meeting and having a committed, long-term relationship with a spectacularly gifted Asian woman possessed of all that multiplicity of gifts and abilities that one so frequently finds in these young women, like deeply buried stratum in exotic geological formations. Examples of this quality run through my mind like grains of whitest rice through a winnowing, rusty wire mesh that is slightly too large for its applied intent. Amy Chua, Amy Tan, Yuja Wang, Michelle Yeoh, the list of suitable female paragons exhibiting these qualities is virtually endless.

How marvelous it would be to have as one’s partner an Asian woman who in addition to possessing genetic wherewithal of the highest order, also has exceptional talent in the finer arts (graphic art, literature, music, et al) as well as…pause to take a small breath…a traditional Confucian commitment to both husband and family, specifically with an aim to bearing children within whom to foster these gifts in perpetuity like hybrid seeds waiting to germinate in a vessel capable of measureless growth and expansion!

For, despite all my continual references to the lugubrious philosophies of Celine and Schopenhauer, despite all my pessimistic but starkly realistic allusions to the wisdom of the mavens of demographic science like Thos. Malthus and similar advocates of deliberately constrained population limits, I somewhat sadly acknowledge that, although the world needs another hungry human body about as much as a shark needs more teeth, let’s face it: having children is perhaps the most basic human function of our species. It’s the only thing we’re really good at, actually, after all the finer aesthetic aspirations of humanity’s higher ideals have been carefully peeled away like the leaves of a superego-afflicted artichoke, revealing the tasty heart at its center.

Today, after seven and a half decades of life on this much-abused, beautiful world, infested as it is by unhappy, festering swarms of the ignorant, the half-insane and frankly quite often downright brutal humanoid lifeforms, I realise that in holding true to my ideals, I have probably relinquished the only thing that would have brought greater meaning to my own little tightly strung world of pre-conceived wisdom: creating little genetic replications of my own co-making with someone whose beauty, grace, talent and singular intelligence are worthy of a world in need of a higher level of consciousness.

There is, after all, that timeless advice from Gong Fu Zhou that if one wishes to be a superior person, one must strive to cultivate superior friends and associates.

Today, having been married for slightly in excess of 33 years, I certainly have a loyal marital companion whom I value most among all my treasures, but there’s so much more I could have had (since we are completely and diametrically opposite each other in terms of our aspirations, ambitions and abilities; I am a wild-eyed Irish dreamer and wifie is a hard-grounded pragmatist), had I married someone with Tan’s creative imagination, Amy Chua’s incisive intellect, Wang’s musical prowess or Michelle Yeoh’s chameleon-like adeptness at being what she may not really be but that skillfully reflects a totally different, fantastical reality!

There is, after all, a psychological theory that although pairings of two individuals who share more closely matched extremes of personality may generate a monumental, never-ending clash of passions that incite a continuous battle of wills and domestic upsets, that is exactly what Amy Tan went through with her strong-willed, bipolar mother and the astoundingly moving result is plentifully found in Tan's books.

And whenever I walk the pup past the children’s playground (which is several times every day, rain or shine), I am struck again by the starkest of wistful pangs when I see a willowy Asian-American mother tending carefully, lovingly and vitally to her small charges, as they play on the swings. Such culturally imbued commitment to raising one’s children to the fullest benevolent measure is priceless beyond measure, in my estimation, and we in the West so often fail in that singularly most important task.

There is, alas, yet no recourse for reversing the time-clock of the past that has increasingly played itself out as the end-game each of us is engaged in rushes blindly forward towards the final null-point.

Is this unbidden reflection also an ‘unintended memoir’, I wonder?

Perhaps it is, perhaps it is…

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PS: Buy the book ‘Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir’ (2017) by Amy Tan. You may not love it, but you will be intimately drawn up into its folds as surely as a spider’s web snares small winged insects! And you may even be devoured by it…