After four hours of classes today at the Jung-Institut – a slightly short day, but a good one; lectures by Roth, a psychiatrist who has a deep and powerful commitment to his psychotic and schizoid patients, reaching them and keeping them afloat in a way that few can match – I met Patricia, another analyst and pianist from Bern, at a bar in Zürich for a jazz night.
Fine players – remarkable ones, really. The pianist knew every song imaginable, with a casual fluency and a way of playing with all the possibilities that was wonderful to see; he was a New Yorker who now lives here with his Swiss wife. After Patricia introduced me as someone who had written about Sondheim, he started pulling Sondheim songs out of the hat and having huge fun with each of them. Oddly enough he ended with 'New York State of Mind' – of course a song that we hear often enough; but it was strangely, and sharply heartbreaking – you couldn't help but feel how far away from home he felt.
The bassist was shyer, a Swiss guy who was gentle and slightly awkward offstage in a nice formal jacket that may have been chosen by someone else; but when holding his double bass he moved perfectly and utterly into his element, without any trace of self-consciousness, and with wonderful skill. A Zen ability, an amazing fluency: I kept thinking of the end of Dinesen's 'Babette's Feast', when the Norwegian sister exclaims, with tears in her eyes, in Paradise, how you will delight the angels!
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