Needless to say, I was the recipient of some bizarre looks when I wrote down on my waitressing pad said thoughts, which included 'chairoscuro' and 'delaying gratification'....Can't blame the customers entirely - after all, they're certainly not the usual names of world wines you'd happen across on any typical restaurant’s wine list!
Delaying Gratification, however, is a term over which I have mused for some time now, having first come across it as a philosophical notion in M. Scott Peck's 'A Road Less Travelled'. This book was described by my highly intelligent Swedish housemate as 'the Bible' when I'd suggested she read it and she'd suffered the next day, having stayed up all night, eager to learn more with each page turn.
Delaying Gratification is, I imagine, a difficult thing to put into practice for most.
Certainly for me it is something with which I have struggled over time. The notion of delaying gratification means quite literally what it says....to wait rather than to jump....to allow yourself to build up to something important rather than grabbing at it impulsively... it can be extended and applied to a vast number of circumstances in a day, let alone a lifetime.
Delaying Gratification could be, for example....a child on christmas day being asked by his/her parents to wait before greedily ripping open their presents from under the tree. It could be as simple as waiting for your family to all take their seats at the dinner table before hungrily tucking into dinner.
On a vague level, it could be - when asked whether you'd prefer the good or the bad news first, always opting for the bad. Challenging yourself to wait for the good and knowing that when indeed the 'good' is reached or allowed, the pleasure will be all the more sumptuous.
Delaying Gratification for some people could even extend to the moment of orgasm, for example.... 'Nearly there so wait a bit will you.....(2 mins later).... Sloooow down, I’m not readddddy yet!!'. You simply KNOW that by waiting and savouring that wait, the prize will come and the seeping feeling will be, without doubt, worth the wait. (Mind you, that may all depend on the circumstance...)
In music, it is particularly apt, whether composing or listening. Philip Glass, an American composer specialising in the genre of minimalism, is the veritable master of delaying gratification and surely he knows it all too well. His work, 'Company', written for the medium of string quartet or string orchestra, is a tour de force of delayed gratification. The piece originated as instrumental music for Fred Neumann's adaptation of Beckett's prose text of the same name and is comprised of four short, doom-laden movements.
Glass cunningly employs repeating rhythmic ostinatos as the foundation for much of this music, coupled with illuminating shafts of tonal colour that penetrate the stoical militancy of these underlying repeated cells.
Once your ear has become accustomed to this repetition and your mind has accepted (perhaps reluctantly at first) that this is what you are 'stuck with'...only then does the real beauty of delaying gratification in this type of music really come into its own. Having played the waiting game, and resigned yourself in doing so, when small alterations make themselves known, your ears prick up all the more than if you were listening to, say, music with gross harmonic progression.
Whilst there are sudden wave like pushes and pulls of rhythm and orchestration in this piece, Glass always brings us back to the start. To our familiar and comforting ostinatos. To what we know and to where we feel safe. These brief excursions represent real beauty in the music and furthermore perhaps mirror life in a sense. An excursion into the unknown or the reckless or surprising is a welcome break from the mundanity and safety of our daily lives. And though exciting at the time (and much needed), the relief of returning to our safety nets is what really brings the greatest of sensations, the greatest of peace.
In a similar vein, the recent release of Radiohead’s new album ‘The King of Limbs’ has posed a challenge for me in my own delaying of gratification. The undeniable and pushy hype surrounding this release – the band’s first album in three years since their 2007 ‘In Rainbows’ – has incited in me much stress and desperation to hear the finished product. To get my dirty little mitts on the album and have my piece of their musical and internet-overload pie. Having indulged myself firstly by reading some primary reviews of the work, I realised that by subsequently listening with such fervour and with such expectation my hopes of something ‘godly’ would inevitably be dashed. Rather, sit back and wait patiently. Pick a time to really congratulate yourself in your self-control by sitting alone, in your favourite spot, with no time constraints, and give it your full attention. Be clear and listen with that clarity in mind.
Of course, it is a constant struggle for any individual to attempt continual delayed gratification. There are times when we want to scream and shout, to act purely on impulse like animals....to execute things recklessly, to be scandalous, to indulge in the verboten....
And blame we should not....not ourselves nor others....for at least in attempting the delaying of gratification we are, at the very least, aware of the need to harness our selfishness and teenage greed. Rather, then, we should congratulate ourselves on the counts where we do succeed and revel in the serenity and achievement that the choice of delay delivers - at long last.
Bibliography:
Cage, John – Violin Concerto, Prelude and Dance from Akhnaten, Company (Ulster Orchestra)
M. Scott Peck – A Road Less Travelled
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