Unsurprisingly, my friends and family are reaching out to me with expressions of concern and support about my thinking about depression. I had an email from my friend Rhonda recommending a local shrink. My boss who is herself going through a major surgery soon and has her own stress was very solicitous. My daughter, Sarah, called online from England for a video chat.

As I told Sarah, I’m not unhappy.

Rather thanks to my brother’s insight I can see where an array of stuff I am going through points to the possibility of some kind of mental illness or depression.  Why not check it out?

Also, I find my escalating blood pressure alarming.

So now I have to wait until the day after Easter when i see Dr. Fuentes to figure out how to connect with a psychiatrist (preferred) or a psychologist my insurance might possibly pay for.

In the meantime, I continue to be very interested in “The Art of Fugue.” I listen to it and also play through it. My postlude this Palm Sunday is Counterpunctus I from it. Yesterday and today I have been playing through the two part canons. It is surprising how much music Bach can pack into these pieces. Chilly Gonzales’s notion that classical music asks too much of the listener these days keeps going through my head. I think I reject this notion. Gonzales seems as stuck in unhelpful notions as any classical musician I have known.

I keep thinking music is music. Some music will inevitably demand more attention and concentration in the listener than other music. There’s room for it all in my head (and yours probably). Once again food is a great analogy. Sometimes you want a candy bar. Sometimes you want a meal or dish artfully prepared and presented.

I’ve also started reading and thinking about Sophocles’s play, “Antigone.”

I was reading in Bernard Knox’s introduction to The Norton Book of Classical Literature than I bought Saturday at the book sale in Chelsea. He mentioned in the introduction George Steiner’s “brilliant” book, Antigones,” Knox says that Steiner’s book demonstrates the commanding influence this play has had over modern Western thought and feeling.

I was intrigued. The plot to the play did not spring to my mind.

I interlibrary loaned the Steiner book and began reading the play. As I read it, I remember the plot. Antigone buries her disgraced brother, Polynices,  after he and her other brother, Eteocles, have killed each other in a battle over the city of Thebes.  Eteocles was honored in death by King Cleon. Polynices was forbidden to buried and his body was supposed to be left as carrion.

As I was blogging today I figured out that I already own The Norton Book of Classical Literature. I didn’t recognize the book at the sale because the paperback looks like this:

and the hardback like this:

I don’t know exactly where my paperback is anyway. So what the heck.