Free Glenn Gould by Mark Kingwell

postmodern nation of widespread contrapuntal consciousness—postmodern because here there is no dominant Zeitgeist to escape, no hegemonic culture, only the proliferation and expansion of consciousness itself. This viewof Canada, not unique to Gould, would remain influential during the last decades of the twentieth century and it is still a central piece in the never-ending puzzle called Canadian identity.
    Is the preoccupation with isolation a psychic projection of Gould’s own desire to elude the company of others, the flesh-pressing presence of people’s bodies, their breath and heat crowding in upon him? Is it an excavation of a larger psychic cavern, the national unconscious, which keeps its own deep fear of loneliness at bay by constructing not just cities but the logic of survival that supports the frontier conception of the north? Is it, more existentially, a reminder of the essential solitude of every person, who must die alone because my death is something only I can enact—others can watch but no other can do it for me? Is it all of these, wrapped in contrapuntal layers not of voice and sound but of thought and its absence, the silences of solitude and of the final fact, the end of the piece, death? Yes.
    But what of the implicit meaning of north, the need for hospitality? A harsh environment—any strange environment—throws us onto the thresholds of strangers, asking for food and shelter. In the ancient traditions of nomads and settlers, the demand for hospitality could not be refused: I had to admit the stranger to my home, had to offer him a share ofmy wealth and security. The stranger was my revered guest precisely because I did not know him. In Latin, hostis (enemy) and hospitis (guest) are rooted in the same otherness, the novelty of the unknown person—and thus the two hosts hosted in our own tongue, the one who welcomes his guests and the other that is the army, sometimes the heavenly one, which fends off the enemy. Hospitality, so often now removed to the hygienic realm of the service industry—the hospitality suites and hospitality mints of the hotel industry—retains in its etymology a hint of the real stakes.
    The dwellers in Canadian towns and cities know this still, if only in crisis. When a stranger’s vehicle is stranded in the snow. When a pet or child is lost in a storm. When we recall that the security of reliable shelter and ready supply of food is a collective achievement, though deployed under the sign of the isolated individual. The north bespeaks solitude only against the backdrop of shared risk. To be alone requires that we share, that we achieve together, the conditions of solitude’s possibility. Did Gould appreciate that, making all those late-night telephone calls to distant friends, his shadowy interlocutors? Was that his form of welcome?
    If so, was it enough?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Communication
    In his Piano Quarterly review of Geoffrey Payzant’s 1978 book about him, Gould faced down the mild psychoanalyzing in which Payzant had indulged here and there within the pages of his mostly philosophical study.
    Citing psychologist Anthony Storr’s now-classic study The Dynamics of Creation, Payzant had made this suggestive point: “Since most creative activity is solitary, choosing such an occupation means that the schizoid person can avoid the problems of direct relationships with others. If he writes, paints, or composes, he is, of course, communicating. But it is communication entirely on his own terms. … He cannot be betrayed into confidences which he might later regret. … He can choose (or so he often believes) how much of himself to reveal and how much to keep secret.” 84
    Gould retorted: “This citation seems indicative of Payzant’s own attitude in regard to his subject and adroitly summarizes Gould’s abhorrence of city life, his distaste for public appearances, his predilections for telephonic