“How well do I understand myself?” Self-understanding poses a qualitative question, while self-respect mainly states an observation.
Real
True Narratives
Blues music is the forerunner of soul music. Its originators were African-American men who were trying to come to grips with their difficult lives in the deep American South. Its narratives are rich with the stories of the men and women whose difficult and painful lives were a crucible that inspired their work.
- Ted Gioia, Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008).
- Robert Palmer, Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta (Penguin, 1982).
- Elijah Wald, Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues (Amistad, 2004).
- Lawrence Cohn, Nothing But the Blues: The Music and the Musicians (Abbeville Press, 1993).
These titles express how fear can block people from understanding, much less appreciating, the inner experiences of others:
- Giles Oakley, The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues (Da Capo Press, 1997).
- Gayle Dean Wardlow, Chasin' That Devil Music: Searching for the Blues (Backbeat, 1998).
Other true narratives:
- Katharine Graham, Personal History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1997): “That she failed and failed and admits it so openly is winning. That she sees so deeply into her faults and turns to others in desperation makes you cheer for her. That she expresses such love and gratitude for those who helped her is touching. That she grew and finally succeeded is inspiring.”
- Alma Guillermoprieto, Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution (Pantheon, 2004): her “vivid account of . . . six frustrating, fascinating months that opened her eyes to the world beyond dance, and, one suspects, helped turn her into the marvelous journalist familiar to readers of The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and many other publications.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
- Bernard J. Paris, Karen Horney: A Psychoanalyst`s Search for Self-Understanding (Yale University Press, 1994).
- Hans-Helmuth Gander, Self-Understanding and Lifeworld: Basic Traits of a Phenomenological Hermeneutics (Indiana University Press, 2017).
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- Appropriate Behavior: A young bisexual Iranian-American women struggles with relationships and her own sense of identity.
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Montecore: The Silence of the Tiger: A Novel (Knopf, 2011), exploring whether we can understand others’ stories, or our own.
- Mary Gordon, The Love of My Youth: A Novel (Pantheon Books 2011), showcasing the author’s ability “to reveal truths that are hard to face in the unsparing light of day, but without which we could not see ourselves as we are.”
- Francisco Goldman, Monkey Boy: A Novel (Grove Press, 2021): “. . . a memory book, a novel that reads like an autobiographical immersion, a story that travels relentlessly between a difficult present and an unfinished past.”
- Veronica Roth, Chosen Ones: A Novel (William Morrow, 2020): “Her approach is to bring us inside Sloane’s bitter excavation of the past even while keeping us at arm’s length. Each small fragment of an answer is hard-won.”
Poetry
- Theodore Roethke, “The Shape of the Fire” (analysis)
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Elton John’s life story, which is reflected in his music, is that of a man who understood who he was and what he wanted from an early age, pursued his vision, and succeeded. “John taught himself to play the piano at the age of four. He studied at the London Academy of Music but quit two weeks before graduation to pursue a musical career.” “John had a difficult relationship with his father, Stanley Dwight, a member of the Royal Air Force. His parents divorced when he was a teenager, and he and his father clashed over his future.” Though his sexuality evolved, at least as he revealed it, his music has long been popular in LGBTQ communities, where it resonates powerfully. His playlists and releases are long (see also here). Here are a few of his live appearances:
- Live in London (1977) (119’)
- Elton John in Central Park, New York City (1980) (60’)
- Live in Barcelona, Spain (1992) (123’)
- One Night Only: Live at Madison Square Garden (2000)
- Royal Opera House concert, London (2002) (64’)
- At the Red Piano, Las Vegas (2005) (99’)
- Outside Lands San Francisco concert (2015) (123’)
- BBC Radio 2 Live in Hyde Park (2016) (91’)
- “Farewell, Yellow Brick Road” Tour (2019) (81’)
Flora Purim “is a world-class jazz singer from Brazil who possesses an uncommon six-octave range. Her performance style melds fluid phrasing, slippery jazz harmonics, and syncopation with Brazilian rhythms and folk and pop forms.” She “. . . began studying piano and classical guitar while growing up in Brazil. Her Russian-born father and Brazilian mother were both musicians and encouraged their daughter's love of the art form. Although her father forbade her to study anything but classical music, her mother introduced her to jazz during the daytime when her father was not home.” “Purim began her career in Brazil during the early 1960s. During this period, she made a recording, entitled Flora e M.P.M., in which she sang bossa nova standards of the day by Carlos Lyra and Roberto Menescal. Later in the 1960s, Purim was lead singer for the Quarteto Novo, led by Hermeto Pascoal and Airto Moreira.” Her music has had both artistic and ethical dimensions: “After reaching young adulthood, Purim mixed jazz with radical protest songs to defy the repressive Brazilian government of that time.” Artistically, she knows who she is. Her discography and playlists are substantial. Here she is live in 1988.
Other artists and albums:
- Geoff Eales, “Memoir” (2021) (63’): “The music on Memoir has the pianist's personal stamp all over it. Finely wrought compositions that draw the listener into his world. Freely improvised pieces that encompass a lifetime of music making and that flow with a logic and lyricism that have an exuberance and zest for life, and seem to flow effortlessly from the keys.”
- Rebecca Nash, “Redefining Element 78” (2022) (52’): “This new work was commissioned by the Bristol Jazz Festival and is a collection of eight pieces imagining sound in relation to the precious metals: Platinum, Osmium, Rhodium, Iridium, Ruthenium, and Palladium.”
Compositions:
- Sandro Fuga, Piano Sonatas 1-3 (1957, 1976, 1980) (approx. 72’): “Fuga wrote with a great many tone clusters, a method that even some of the most advanced Italian composers avoided; and yet, at the same time, he wrote melodic top lines that, divorced from the tonally thick harmony, were quite melodic.” “Fuga considered himself a ‘Romantic survivor’, believing music to represent the expression of emotions. Thanks to his rejection of avantgarde ephemera and a profound faith in humanity, his piano sonatas are expressive, eloquent and emotionally compelling.”
- Isang Yun, Silla – Legend for Orchestra (1992) (approx. 17’): “The very title of Silla completed in 1992 refers to the period of Korean history when the foundation stone was laid for the geographical area of the Korean kingdoms, whose borders remained the same until the end of World War II . . .”
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Miles Davis, “So What”
- Marina, “I Am Not a Robot” (lyrics)
- Bastille, “Flaws” (lyrics)
- Ed Sheeran, “Castle on the Hill” (lyrics)