The music of Schumann’s ‘Ghost Variations’ was supposedly sung to him in a feverish dream near the end of his life, and it comprises his last written work. In the midst of writing them he tried to drown himself in the Rhine, only to be rescued by bargemen, and a day or two later he reportedly finished the music. After that he voluntarily entered an asylum where he would die two years later.
There is something very ghostly about this music, fitting for the eve of October, fitting for the time of the year when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest and most easily penetrable. Unlike some ghost stories, this one is more soothing and consoling, resulting in calm and acceptance, a resignation to the customary line between the physical world and the spiritual world, and those elusive moments when the line is blurred or erased.
Shadows of the past are my usual ghosts. They haunt and vex my every step, and no matter how hard I have tried to shake them, their release only comes with a hard-won and well-earned understanding of why they remain. It’s best to make peace with such ghosts, to embrace the aches of the past and to gently but deliberately untie their tethers from the present. Like so many people, sometimes all they want is acknowledgement – a nod and a kind word of forgiveness or apology – and this is a perfect time of the year to do so. A winter is best spent stark and bare – it is the natural way of the world, which wants to strip everything down starting with the leaves, and leave its own mark in ice or snow until it’s ready to clothe us again.
