#while i know stuff like that doesnt diminish the value of my work it still stings man. esp when its hard for me to make stuff anyway | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

themoneybuff-blog · 6 years

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Mastering the abundance mindset (and changing your money blueprint)

Shares 531 Old habits die hard. When you get to be a middle-aged man like me, you have forty-nine years of learned behavior to guide your actions and decisions even when you know your choices arent necessarily for the best. Our mental blueprints (including our money blueprints) are deeply ingrained and tough to change. Dont worry. I havent turned into a spendthrift or anything. But Ive been thinking a lot lately about how certain parts of my past continue to affect me, sometimes in huge and annoying ways. For instance, I fight an ongoing battle against a scarcity mindset. I havent been able to master the abundance mindset.

Scarcity and Abundance Ive been reluctant to talk about scarcity and abundance because the terms have been co-opted by Law of Attraction types who use them to encourage magical thinking. I hate the New Age-y approach to these concepts. I want to discuss them from a psychological perspective. With a scarcity mindset, you believe that everything is limited. Time is limited. Money is limited. Love is limited. This causes you to worry about the future. Youre consciously or unconsciously more concerned with what might go wrong than with what could go right. You make fear-based decisions. Youre afraid of missing out. Youre afraid of not having enough. You have trouble with moderation and often exhibit all or nothing behavior.With an abundance mindset, you believe theres plenty for everyone. Theres plenty of wealth, prestige, and happiness to go around. Youre optimistic about the future. You think things will work out even if there are bumps along the way. You make decisions based on the Big Picture rather than a single snapshot in time. Its easy for you to balance tomorrow and today. Ive written before about my trouble with impulse control. In the past, Ive had problems with overspending, overeating, video game addiction, alcohol consumption, and borderline hoarding behavior. (Im a compulsive collector of Stuff.) All of this the collecting, the addictive tendencies, the lack of self-control stems from a scarcity mentality. But I didnt realize it until a few years ago when my therapist helped me see the source. Because my family didnt have much when I was young, I find it difficult to defer gratification. My default mindset even when life is grand is that if I want something and its available, I should get it now. Somewhere deep inside, I feel as if there wont ever be another chance. My father had this mindset. My mother had it. My brothers have it too. (Like me, Jeff and Tony have both learned to fight the feeling of scarcity in their own fashion.) A Real-Life Example of the Scarcity Mindset Over the past year, my deeply-seated scarcity mindset has begun to manifest itself in another annoying way. Since moving into our new house last July 1st, weve had to make tens of thousands of dollars worth of repairs. About $56,000 of these costs came from the sale of our previous home, but that still leaves us on the hook for $30,000 or $40,000. We have one last project to do before we believe were finished: We want to replace the rotting back deck and install a hot tub. (This was the first project we had planned to tackle when we moved in, but we had to put it off for more pressing priorities.) Kim and I know without a doubt that well use the deck and hot tub nearly every single day of the year. (TMI: Currently, she and I both take several hot baths each week. If we had a hot tub, wed be able to soak together.) Its not a question of whether well get value from building an outdoor oasis. No, the problem is that Ive reached some sort of mental breaking point. Im reluctant to spend another penny on home improvement. Im over it. I hate the idea of cashing out yet another chunk of my index funds. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I feel like thats money Ill never get back. (I feel this way despite the intellectual understanding that wed recoup maybe 80% of our costs if we were to sell the home in the future.) I recognize that this is my scarcity mindset kicking in, yet I cannot shake these feelings. Theyre a part of my money blueprint. Heres the thing: In so many ways, financial freedom depends on casting aside this scarcity mentality and embracing an abundance mindset instead. Financial well-being is fundamentally tied to positive expectations of the future. Lets look at three ways the scarcity mindset can manifest itself and how to embrace abundance instead. Jealousy and Spite For some, the scarcity mindset manifests as jealousy and spite. These folks resent the success of others, financial and otherwise. They find it tough to be happy when something good happens to a friend or family member. Theyre territorial, reluctant to co-operate toward a greater common good. Heres how Stephen Covey describes this flavor of scarcity in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. This type of scarcity mindset is the source of the average Americans love-hate relationship with wealth. Most people want to be wealthy but are suspicious of those who already are. They typical person believes that when she makes money, its a result of hard work and skill. But others who get rich? Theyre lucky jerks who dont deserve it. People with this form of the scarcity mindset dont just hold back themselves but they keep down the people around them. This usually manifests as gossip and griping. Sometimes these people keep score. In extreme cases, they actively work to sabotage the success of others. People with this type of scarcity mindset are a drag on life, a net negative to the world at large. What if you suffer from this sort of scarcity mentality? Train yourself to be happy for others. Recognize that my success does not diminish you. Life is not a zero-sum game. To that end: Dont compare yourself to other people. Focus on yourself, on your own goals and accomplishments. If you must compete, compete with yourself. Strive for constant self-improvement.Practice a win-win approach to life. Look for ways to improve your own situation while also helping those around you. When faced with a conflict, dont try to be the victor; instead, work toward a solution beneficial to both parties.Teach yourself to share. Force yourself to give things time, money, resources to other people. When you have a surplus of something, spread the love. (More on this later.) Jealousy and spite can be overcome, but it takes work. Making the effort is a great way to change your outlook, creating a better life for yourself and the people around you. Never Enough

For others, the scarcity mindset manifests as fear of the future. These people think and act like children of the Great Depression. Theyre so worried about how bad things could get that theyre unable to recognize and enjoy what they already have even when they have a lot. Let me give you an example. I once met with a woman who had over $6 million in the bank. She was my age mid forties and lived a modest lifestyle. She wasnt overly frugal, but she didnt spend a lot either. Plus she had just landed a job that paid half a million per year. Nice position to be in, right? Not to her. She was scared to stop working because the didnt want to run out of money. Based on standard assumptions about inflation and stock market returns, this woman could probably spend $240,000 per year for the rest of her life and still die rich. (Thats without taking into account her new $500k per year position!) Her spending was closer to $50,000 per year, yet she fretted about not having enough. Other folks are more extreme. Ive known retirees who have millions in the bank but who are so frightened of the future inflation! peak oil! stock market collapse! that they wont spend on needed home repairs and health concerns. What good is all of that money if youre dead or your house falls down around you? These folks arent harming anyone else (at least not directly), but theyre doing severe damage to their own well-being. They sacrifice happiness today in order to have more tomorrow but they never enjoy tomorrow. People with this type of scarcity mentality never have enough. No amount of money will allow them to sleep soundly at night. What if you feel like youll never have enough? Unlike those who suffer from jealousy and spite, you should keep score. Do this in two ways: First, keep a journal a standard daily diary. It doesnt have to be detailed. Write down the most important events from your life. And every day note at least one thing for which you are grateful. At the end of each year, go back and re-read what youve written. (This exercise will increase in value the longer you keep at it.)Second, track your net worth and spending. Know how much you have and how much you need. Remember this rule of thumb: For every $25 youve saved, you can probably spend $1 each year without worry. (If youre really nervous, you might change that to $1 for every $30 or $40 saved.) If you have more than enough stashed away and still fret about the future, force yourself to spend. Im dead serious. Pick something youve always wanted to do or have, and go get it. Money is a tool to build a better life. If the tool sits unused, whats the point? Instant Gratification Finally, there are the folks like me, people who find it tough to wait for what they want. Were shopaholics and compulsive spenders. With our flavor of the scarcity mindset, were so skeptical about tomorrow that we enjoy too much today. We want it all and we want it now. A decade ago, when I still struggled with money, I had nothing saved. No retirement, no nothing. What I ought to have been doing was paying down my debt and building a foundation for the future. Instead, I was spending everything I earned on books, comics, and computer games. It never occurred to me to wait. I wanted things now, so I bought them. As I mentioned at the start of this article, my therapist helped me to understand that growing up poor had given me a loathing of uncertainty and an inability to delay gratification. My money blueprint was largely constructed around a fear of missing out. During my transition from spendthrift to money boss, I learned to put off potential spending. I learned to wait for the things I wanted. Like the last group, people with this sort of scarcity mentality never have enough. But the lack manifests in a different way. Instead of needing more money, we need more Stuff. We buy and buy and buy and are never satisfied. Theres no amount of possessions that will make us happy. What if a feeling of scarcity drives you to always want more? Practice the art of deferred gratification. I learned this skill by using the 30-day rule. Heres how it works: When you see something you want, make a note of what it is, where you saw it, and how much it costs. But dont buy it yet.Over the next 30 days, be on the lookout for free or cheap alternatives. Does the library have that book? Can you borrow that tool from a friend? Could the local thrift store have a similar shirt?At the end of 30 days, if you still want the item then consider buying it. In most cases, however, youll find the urge to purchase has passed. Also practice moderation. Recognize that most things in life dont require an all or nothing approach. You can have some, and thats okay. Finally, keep a gratitude journal. The fundamental problem with this type of scarcity mindset is not appreciating what you already have. Force yourself to catalog the good things in your life. From Scarcity to Abundance A scarcity mindset leads to self-defeating behavior. It sabotages your chances for future financial success. Even when a Depression-type scarcity mentality helps you accumulate piles of cash, youre unable to enjoy it. Youre afraid to. Fear is always at the heart of scarcity: fear of failure, fear of the future, fear of missing out. Those with a scarcity mindset cling to the notion that theres a limited amount of everything, and theyre afraid they wont get their share. Well talk more about fear (and overcoming it) next week. For now, you should recognize that in order to achieve financial freedom, you must adopt an abundance mentality. If youre worried about lack, you arent free.

Ive already suggested several ways to fight specific flavors of scarcity. To finish, lets look at a technique anyone can use to move from scarcity to abundance: To get what you want, give what you want. What do I mean? In an amazing article from the academic journal Psychological Science, researchers suggest that giving time gives you time. The authors found that spending time on others (instead of yourself) boosts how much time you think you have in both the present and the future. Many of us feel pressured by the modern world. We feel rushed, as if theres never enough time to do what we want. We feel a lack, a scarcity, of minutes and hours and days. To cope with this, we tend to turn inward. We watch TV. We play videogames. We get a massage. But studies show that wasting time like this truly is a waste. When we spend time on ourselves, we feel like the time is lost. On the other hand, when we give our time to others helping friends or volunteering in the community, for instance we experience feelings of time affluence. Plus our time seems fuller. We feel better about ourselves and what weve done. And as a bonus: Giving time to others not only increases the givers sense of subjective time but can also increase the recipients objective amount of time, such that giving time contributes to the well-being of both the self and others. That, my friends, is abundance in action. The bottom line? When individuals feel time constrained, they should become more generous with their time despite their inclination to be less so. The same idea applies to other areas of your life in which you experience feelings of lack. When I started giving away and selling my Stuff several years ago, for example, I came to realize just how much I had. Before, when I was constantly in acquisition mode, I felt like I had very little. I was wrong. I had mountains of things! If you feel a lack of respect from others, give respect to others. If you feel a lack of compassion from others, be compassionate to others. If you feel like people dont love you, love other people. If you feel broke, donate time and money to the poor. If you feel like youll never have enough wealth, systematically give away some of what you have. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes: The abundance mentalityis the paradigm that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody. It results in sharing of prestige, of recognition, of profits, of decision making. It opens possibilities, options, alternatives, and creativity. The abundance mindset comes from understanding theres plenty in the world: plenty of money, plenty of love, plenty of time. Theres plenty for everyone both for you and for others. Theres plenty now and therell be plenty tomorrow. Enjoy it! A Real-Life Example of the Abundance Mindset While we were wintering in Savannah two years ago, Kim hustled to get her dental hygiene license for the state of Georgia so that she could earn some money. She spent a couple of days driving across the city, dropping off rsums and speaking with doctors. Soon she started getting calls asking her to do fill-in work while other hygienists were sick or on vacation. She also got an offer for a long-term position at a big office in town. Kim could have taken the long-term gig. In fact, she was tempted. What if I cant find any other positions? she asked as we talked through her options. This is a sure thing. Maybe I should take it in case nothing else comes along. After a few days of internal debate, Kim decided not to take the long-term offer. Im getting plenty of calls from other offices, she reasoned. Ill bet I can stay busy just with the short-term stuff, and thatll give me greater flexibility. Sure enough. Because she refused to make a fear-based decision, because she chose to believe shed have more opportunity rather than less, she was able to pick and choose when and where shed work. She had more offers than she had time. She constantly got new calls asking her to fill in. When we returned to Portland, she used the same experience to find permanent dental hygiene positions. She cast her net wide, then waited for the offers to come. And they came. By exercising patience and an abundance mindset, she landed two gigs that she loves. (Plus, she still gets fill-in offers all of the time.) Shares 531 https://www.getrichslowly.org/abundance-mindset/

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vitalmindandbody · 7 years

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Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa talk music, art and creativity

One writes fiction, the other conducts an orchestra, but Murakami and Ozawa share a drive, determination and a passion for music. They discuss the creative process, inspiration and the eclecticism of Mahler

Until we started these interviews, I had never had a serious conversation with Seiji Ozawa about music. True, I lived in Boston from 1993 to 1995, while he was still music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and I would often go to concerts he conducted, but I was just another anonymous fan in the audience. Not long after that, my wife and I happened to become friends with his daughter, Seira, and we would see and talk to her father now and then. But our acquaintance was casual and had nothing to do with either his work or mine.

Perhaps one reason we never talked seriously about music until recently is that the maestros work kept him so fully immersed. As a result, whenever we got together to have a drink, wed talk about anything other than music. At most, we might have shared a few fragmentary remarks on some musical topics that never led anywhere. Ozawa is the type of person who focuses all his energy on his work, so that when he steps away from it, he needs to take a breather. Knowing this, I avoided bringing up musical topics when I was in his company.

In December of 2009, however, Ozawa was found to have oesophageal cancer, and after major surgery the following month, he had to restrict his musical activities, largely replacing them with a challenging programme of recuperation and rehabilitation. Perhaps because of this regime, we gradually began to talk more about music whenever we met. As weakened as he was, he took on a new vitality whenever the topic turned to music. Even when talking with a musical layman such as myself, any sort of conversation about music seemed to provide the refreshment he needed. And the very fact that I was not in his field probably set him at ease.

I have been a fervent jazz fan for close to half a century, but I have also been listening to classical music with no less enjoyment, collecting classical records since I was in high school, and going to concerts as often as time would permit. Especially when I was living in Europe from 1986 to 1990 I was immersed in classical music. Listening to jazz and the classics has always been both an effective stimulus and a source of peace to my heart and mind. If someone told me that I could listen to only one or the other but not to both, my life would be immeasurably diminished. As Duke Ellington once said: There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. In that sense, jazz and classical music are fundamentally the same. The pure joy one experiences listening to good music transcends questions of genre.

During one of Ozawas visits to my home, we were listening to music and talking about one thing or another when he told me a tremendously interesting story about Glenn Gould and Leonard Bernsteins 1962 performance in New York of Brahmss First Piano Concerto. What a shame it would be to let such a fascinating story just evaporate, I thought. Somebody ought to record it and put it on paper. And, brazen as it may seem, the only somebody that happened to cross my mind at that moment was me.

When I suggested this to Ozawa, he liked the idea immediately. Why not? he said. Ive got plenty of time to spare these days. Lets do it.

To have Ozawa ill with cancer was a heart-wrenching development for the music world, for me personally, and of course for him; but that it gave rise to this time for the two of us to sit and have good, long talks about music may be one of those rare silver linings that are not in fact to be found in every cloud.

At the risk of sounding somewhat presumptuous, I confess that in the course of our many conversations, I began to suspect that Ozawa and I might have several things in common. Questions of talent or productivity or fame aside, what I mean here is that I can feel a sense of identity in the way we live our lives.

First of all, both of us seem to take the same simple joy in our work. Whatever differences there might be between making music and writing fiction, both of us are happiest when immersed in our work. And the very fact that we are able to become so totally engrossed in it gives us the deepest satisfaction. What we end up producing as a result of that work may well be important, but aside from that, our ability to work with utter concentration and to devote ourselves to it so completely that we forget the passage of time is its own irreplaceable reward.

Seiji Ozawa rehearses with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in Salzburg, 1999. Photograph: Ali Schafler/AP

Secondly, we both maintain the same hungry heart we possessed in our youth, that persistent feeling that this is not good enough, that we must dig deeper, forge farther ahead. This is the major motif of our work and our lives. Observing Ozawa in action, I could feel the depth and intensity of the desire he brought to his work. He was convinced of his own rightness and proud of what he was doing, but not in the least satisfied with it. I could see he knew he should be able to make the music even better, even deeper, and he was determined to make it happen even as he struggled with the constraints of time and his own physical strength.

The third of our shared traits is stubbornness. Were patient, tough, and, finally, just plain stubborn. Once weve decided to do something in a certain way, it doesnt matter what anybody else says, thats how were going to do it. And even if, as a result, we find ourselves in dire straits, possibly even hated, we will take responsibility for our actions without making excuses. Ozawa is an utterly unpretentious person who is constantly cracking jokes, but he is also extremely sensitive to his surroundings, and his priorities are clear. Once he has made his mind up, he doesnt waver. Or at least that is how he appears to me.

Creative people have to be fundamentally egoistic. This may sound pompous, but it happens to be the truth. People who live their lives watching what goes on around them, trying not to make waves, and looking for the easy compromise, are not going to be able to do creative work, whatever their field. To build something where there was nothing requires deep individual concentration, and in most cases that kind of concentration occurs in a place unrelated to cooperation with others, a place we might even call dmonisch.

Still, letting ones ego run wild on the assumption that one is an artist will disrupt any kind of social life, which in turn interrupts the individual concentration so indispensable for creativity. Baring the ego in the late 19th century was one thing, but now, in the 21st century, it is a far more difficult matter. Creative professionals constantly have to find those realistic points of compromise between themselves and their environment.

What I am trying to say here is that while Ozawa and I of course have found very different ways to establish those points of compromise, we are likely headed in pretty much the same direction. And while we may set very different priorities, the way we set them may be quite similar. Which is why I was able to listen to his stories with something more than mere sympathy.

This conversation took place on 22 February 2011, in my Tokyo office. We talked a great deal about Mahler. As we spoke, I realised what an important part of Ozawas repertory the music of Mahler has been. I myself had a problem getting into Mahler for a very long time, but at a certain stage in my life the music began to move me.

Haruki Murakami: Among musicians who perform Mahler and maybe among his listeners, too there are many who think a lot about the composers life or his worldview or his times or fin-de-sicle introspection. Where do you stand with regard to such things?

Seiji Ozawa: I dont think about them all that much. I do read the scores closely, though. On the other hand, when I started working in Vienna more than 30 years ago, I made friends and started going to the art museums there. And when I first saw the work of Klimt and Egon Schiele, they came as a real shock to me. Since then, Ive made it a point to go to art museums. When you look at the art of the time, you understand something about the music. Take Mahlers music: it comes from the breakdown of traditional German music. You get a real sense of that breakdown from the art, and you can tell it was not some half-baked thing.

HM: I know what you mean. The last time I went to Vienna, I went to a Klimt exhibition at an art museum. Seeing the art in the city where it was created, you really feel it.

SO: Klimts work is beautiful and painted with minute attention to detail; but looking at it, dont you think theres something kind of crazy about it, too?

HM: Yes, its certainly not what youd call normal.

SO: Theres something about it, I dont know, that tells you about the importance of madness, or that transcends things like morality. And in fact, at the time, morality really was breaking down, and there was a lot of sickness going around.

HM: A lot of syphilis and stuff. Vienna was more or less pervaded with this kind of mental and physical breakdown: it was the atmosphere of the age. The last time I went to Vienna, I had some time to kill, so I rented a car and spent four or five days driving around the southern part of the Czech Republic the old Bohemian region where Mahlers birthplace was located, the little village of Kalischt, or Kalit as they call it now. I didnt go there on purpose, I just happened to pass through. Its still tremendously rural out there, nothing but fields as far as the eye can see. Its not that far from Vienna, but I was surprised at how different the two areas were. So Mahler came from a place like this! I thought. What a huge turnabout in values he must have experienced! Back then, Vienna was not only the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire, it was a colourful centre of European culture and probably ripe to the point of being overripe. The Viennese must have looked upon Mahler as a real country bumpkin.

SO: I see what you mean.

Seiji Ozawa conducts Mahler Symphony No 9.

HM: And on top of that, he was a Jew. But come to think of it, the city of Vienna gained a lot of its vitality by taking in culture from its surroundings. You can see this in the biographies of Anton Rubinstein and Rudolf Serkin. Viewing it this way, its easy to see why popular songs and Jewish klezmer melodies pop up in Mahlers music all of a sudden, mixing into his serious musicality and aesthetic melodies like intruders. This diverse quality is one of the real attractions of Mahlers music. If he had been born and raised in Vienna, I doubt that his music would have turned out that way.

SO: True.

HM: All the great creators of that period Kafka, Mahler, Proust were Jews. They were shaking up the established cultural structure from the periphery. In that sense, it was important that Mahler was a Jew from the countryside. I felt that strongly when I was travelling around Bohemia.

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Gustav Mahler in 1907. Photograph: Imagno/Getty Images

HM: Just listening to this third movement of the First Symphony, it seems pretty clear to me that Mahlers music is filled with many different elements, all given more or less equal value, used without any logical connection, and sometimes even in conflict with one another: traditional German music, Jewish music, fin-de-sicle overripeness, Bohemian folksongs, musical caricatures, comic subcultural elements, serious philosophical propositions, Christian dogma, Asian worldviews no single one of which you can place at the centre of things. With so many elements thrown together indiscriminately (which sounds bad, I know), arent there plenty of openings where a non-western conductor such as yourself can make his own special inroads? In other words, isnt there something particularly universal or cosmopolitan about Mahlers music?

SO: Well, this is all very complicated, but I do think there are such openings.

HM: I remember when we talked about Berlioz and you said that his music had openings that a Japanese conductor could exploit, because it was crazy. Cant you say pretty much the same thing about Mahler?

SO: The big difference between Berlioz and Mahler is that Berlioz doesnt put in all these detailed instructions.

HM: Ah, I see.

SO: So we performers are a lot freer when it comes to Berlioz. We have less freedom with Mahler, but when you get to those final, subtle details, I think there exists a sort of universal opening. We Japanese and other Asian people have our own special kind of sorrow. I think it comes from a slightly different place than Jewish sorrow or European sorrow. If you are willing to attempt to understand all of these mentalities, and make informed decisions after you do so, then the music will naturally open up for you. Which is to say that when an easterner performs music written by a westerner, it can have its own special meaning. I think its well worth the effort.

HM: You mean you have to dig down to something deeper than superficial Japanese emotionalism to understand it and internalise it?

SO: Yes, thats it. I like to think that a performance of western music that also makes full use of Japanese sensibilities assuming the performance itself is excellent has its own raison dtre.

HM: When Im listening to Mahler, I always think that there are deep layers of the psyche that play an important role in his music. Maybe its something Freudian. In Bach or Beethoven or Brahms, youre more in the world of German conceptual philosophy, where the rational, unburied parts of the psyche play the most important role. In Mahlers music, though, it feels as though he is deliberately plunging down into the dark, into the subterranean realm of the mind. As if in a dream, you find many motifs that contradict one another, that are in opposition, that refuse to blend and yet are indistinguishable, all joined together almost indiscriminately. I dont know whether hes doing this consciously or unconsciously, but it is at least very direct and honest.

SO: Mahler and Freud lived at just about the same time, didnt they?

HM: Yes. Both were Jewish, and their birthplaces were not far apart, I think. Freud was a little older, and Mahler came to Freud for a consultation when his wife, Alma, had an affair [with the architect Walter Gropius, whom she married after Mahlers death]. Freud is said to have been deeply respectful of Mahler. That kind of straightforward pursuit of the underground springs of the unconscious may make us cringe but I think it is probably what helps to make Mahlers music so very universal today.

SO: In that sense, Mahler rebelled single-handedly against the sturdy mainstream of German music, from Bach through Haydn to Mozart, and from Beethoven to Brahms at least until the emergence of 12-tone music.

HM: When you stop to think about it, though, 12-tone music is extremely logical, in the same sense that Bachs Well-Tempered Clavier is logical music … Twelve-tone music itself has hardly survived, but different elements of it were absorbed into the music that came afterwards … But this is really quite different from the kind of influence that Mahlers music has had on later generations. I think you can say that, dont you?

SO: I do.

HM: In that sense, Mahler was really one of a kind.

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HM: What is the biggest difference between reading a score by Richard Strauss, for example, and reading a score by Mahler?

SO: At the risk of oversimplifying it, Id say that if you traced the development of German music from Bach through Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms, you could read Richard Strauss as part of that trajectory. Of course, hes adding all kinds of new layers, but still you can read his music in that stream. But not Mahler. You need a whole new view. Thats the most important thing that Mahler did. There were also composers like Schoenberg and Alban Berg in his day, but they didnt do what Mahler did.

Portrait of Arnold Schoenberg by Richard Gerstl. Photograph: Archivo Iconografico, S.A./COR

HM: As you said a minute ago, Mahler was opening up very different areas than 12-tone music.

SO: He was using the same materials as, say, Beethoven or Bruckner, but building a whole different kind of music with them.

HM: Fighting his battles while always preserving tonality?

SO: Right. But still, in effect he was headed in the direction of atonality. Clearly.

HM: Would you say that by pursuing the possibilities of tonality as far as he could take them, in effect he confused the whole issue of tonality?

SO: I would. He brought in a kind of multilayering.

HM: Like, lots of different keys in the same movement?

SO: Right. He keeps changing things around. And hell do stuff like using two different keys simultaneously.

HM: He doesnt discard tonality, but he causes confusion from the inside, really shakes things up. Thats how he was, in effect, heading toward atonality. But was he striving for something different from the atonality of 12-tone music?

SO: Yes, it was different, I think. It might be closer to call what he was doing polytonality rather than atonality. Polytonality is one step before you get to atonality it means that you use more than one key at the same time. Or you keep changing keys as the music flows. In any case, the atonality that Mahler was aiming for came out of something quite different from the atonality and 12-tone scale that Schoenberg and Berg were offering. Later, people like Charles Ives pursued polytonality more deeply.

HM: Do you think Mahler thought he was doing something avant garde?

SO: No, I dont think so.

HM: Schoenberg and Berg were certainly very conscious of being avant garde, though.

SO: Oh, very much so. They had their method. Mahler had no such thing.

HM: So he flirted with chaos, not as a methodology, but very naturally and instinctively. Is that what youre saying?

SO: Yes. Isnt that exactly where his genius lies?

John Coltrane By Lee Friedlander.

HM: There was a development like that in jazz, too. In the 1960s, John Coltrane kept edging closer and closer to free jazz, but basically he stayed within the bounds of a loose tonality called mode. People still listen to his music today but free jazz is little more than a historical footnote. What were talking about may be kind of like that.

SO: Wow, so there was something like that in jazz?

HM: Come to think of it, though, Mahler had no clear successors. The main symphonic composers who came after him were not Germans but Soviet Russians, such as Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Shostakovichs symphonies are vaguely reminiscent of Mahler.

SO: Yes, very much so. I agree. But Shostakovichs music is very coherent. You dont feel the same kind of craziness you do in Mahler.

HM: Maybe for political reasons it wasnt easy for him to let anything like craziness come out. There is also something deeply abnormal about Mahlers music.

SO: Yes, its true. The art of Egon Schiele is like that, too. When I saw his pictures, I could really see how he and Mahler were living in the same place at the same time. Living in Vienna for a while, I got a strong sense of that atmosphere. It was a tremendously interesting experience for me.

HM: Mahler says in his autobiography that being director of the Vienna State Opera was the top position in the musical world. In order to obtain that position, he went so far as to abandon his Jewish faith and convert to Christianity. He felt the position was worth making such a sacrifice. It occurs to me that you were in that very position until quite recently.

SO: He really said that, did he? Do you know how many years he was director of the State Opera?

HM: Ten years, I think.

SO: For somebody who spent such a long time conducting opera, its amazing that he never wrote one of his own. I wonder why not. He wrote all those Lieder, and he was very conscious of the combination of words and music.

HM: Thats true, now that you mention it. Its too bad. But given the kind of person he was, it might have been hard for him to choose a libretto.

English translation copyright Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa 2016. Extracted from Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami and Seiji Ozawa, published by Harvill Secker on 15 November at 20.00.