the problem of routine

November 9, 2025

Making the Best of Life in a Time of Uncertainty

Play along with me.

Imagine things have not gone well. In fact, you are serving a life sentence in a strange, outdoor prison, alone with no escape possible.

You perform the one job required of you. Push an enormous boulder up to the top of the hill, from which it will fall back to where you began.

Repeat, repeat, repeat without end.

You may recall the character so condemned is named Sisyphus. In Greek myth, this man alienated Zeus and was assigned the pointless, eternal task as punishment.

Yet there is another take on the poor fellow’s desperate state. It is the perspective of Albert Camus, a French writer, philosopher, journalist, and political activist.

Camus believed life to be absurd, absent certainty of its meaning. To him, faith, by itself, was not enough to still the trepidation of the human heart.

Since the universe offers no answer to the question, what remains is our instinctive desire to live and create a life worthy of living.

The Frenchman encourages us to revolt against routine. Given the absurdity and meaninglessness, a human’s best adaptation is to embrace life creatively, striving for authenticity despite all else.

Thus, Camus’s view of Sisyphus is that he must rebel in opposition to the intended aimless and soul-killing routine of his punishment. In doing so, he may yet overcome internally that which cannot be overcome.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

We are encouraged to seek our own purpose and joy, as this prisoner might have. Our task is to set aside the quest for direction from above, as well as the misguided pursuits we sometimes impose on ourselves.

One could stop consideration of Sisyphus right here, but another person offers a different perspective. Woody Allen, whose interviews and movies often explore the question of life’s meaning, didn’t think Camus’s solution to Sisyphus’s dilemma was sufficient.

Woody wondered what the rock-roller would do if somehow, the imposing boulder reached the top of the hill and got stuck.

To Allen, Sisyphus would then face the same conditions we all do. To find a way through the thicket of life in the hope of giving each day value.

Allen believes each of us faces the Sisyphian challenge, but without the massive stone. For him, the question of meaning and animating our lives to defeat routine is always present.

Thus, we search for fulfillment, making of life what we will. The unanswered questions remain.

Why, for what, to what end?

These questions offer us a blank slate we might think of as an opportunity.

For reasons we cannot be sure of, we have been dropped into the thing called life. Our only certainty is that it will terminate, but its ending urges us to make the very best of it every day.

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The painting at the top, Yellow, Red, Blue (1925), is by Wassily Kandinsky. It is followed by Sisyphus by Titian (1548-1549). Both are sourced from Wikiart.org.

February 21, 2021

The Music We Love and the Silence We Need

Do we enhance our appreciation of music by listening to more of it?

The need for silence goes back in time. Man evolved in a world of natural sound and soundlessness. Big cities and machines brought the screech of the elevated train against metal tracks, the rumble from underground subways, and the shout required to be heard above both.

When the conductor Simon Rattle was new to the compositions of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), Rattle’s mentor Berthold Goldschmidt said to him, “Will you please remember what the phrase “ohne hast” (without haste) means in a time when there were no automobiles.” Nor the sounds from such motor cars, he might have added.

Amplified sound became like floor-to-ceiling audio wallpaper over the course of the twentieth century. Civilization capitulated to its growth.

At first, Western society sought realistic prerecorded melodies. Who among us realized we would pay for this miracle, not just in money spent on phonographs, discs, and streaming services?

Convenience and ubiquity leached away some of the thrills of performances created in our presence. The novel sense of a special occasion diminished. The sonorities we loved became routine.

For music to produce its intended effect, the airborne notes must grow out of silence.

Carlo Maria Giulini, another maestro who mentored Simon Rattle, compared his musical conception to perspective in visual art. This artist wanted “air and space” around the sound to set it in relief from other sounds, just as a painter renders foreground against a background. The painter’s or musician’s hand can produce a third dimension’s magic.

Music now enters us through tired and overused ears. To create impact, performers are tempted to make it louder than in quieter times. More people brought bigger halls. The volume of sound enlarged.

One can speculate about a time-transported Beethoven’s reaction to the intrusion of machinery. Think of the brook he tried to evoke in the second movement of his “Pastoral Symphony.” Of course, we can still find streams in the countryside, but we can’t guarantee a chainsaw won’t intrude on the birdsong taking place nearby.

The listener of today is jaded. Television, movies, elevator music, and computers outflank him. Nor does he want to be free of them. Some of us remember the quality of everyday life before stereo recordings. Later, an electronic hum from residential gadgets joined us within moments of relative stillness. Home appliances “speak” to us now.

How often would a music lover 100 years ago have heard a Mozart Concerto in a modest-sized hall? Now we can listen to the same creation more in a week or two than was possible in a lifetime. One needn’t even leave the car or public transportation he takes to work.

I admit music has given me much joy. I’m a veteran concert-goer and recording collector. Yet, I also understand something has been lost.

International concerts in 2021 would have included the tail-end of a world-wide observance of the 250 anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 1770. A wise and necessary idea?

Long before a pandemic aborted the plans to laud the birthday boy, the legendary conductor Otto Klemperer thought otherwise. Musical America published an interview with him in 1927 in commemoration of the composer’s death 100 years before:

If you ask me the best way to celebrate his centenary, I will tell you it is not to play him for a year. He is played too much. Everyone plays Beethoven and no one wishes to hear the (people) who write today. Beethoven has become a business for the box office.

Well, Klemperer got his wish and then some, albeit a little late. Oscar Wilde reminds us, “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.“

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The first image includes a selection of silhouettes of Gustav Mahler created by Otto Bohler (1847-1913) in 1899.  The photograph of Carlo Maria Giulini is from the cover of Thomas Saler’s superb biography of the conductor, Serving Genius. Finally, a photo of Otto Klemperer, part of the collection of The Library of Congress.