I wanted to give my friend, who has everything, something she may not have, a memorable intensity.

                  Most gifts, even loving gifts, are nice enough. Affection resists translation into possession. The old saw – “It’s the thought that counts” – is both true and false: any gift that matters must be propelled by fervency, but if you think too hard what to give you may end up giving nothing, and that’s wrong too. I compose these paragraphs as gifts, some more urgent than others. But to “give” them in lieu of a tangible present feels a sort of cheating. Unless I’ve written a poem for you and you alone, I’m repurposing what already exists – “re-gifting” is the incriminating verb.

                  I thought I’d give my friend an experience she may not have had or if she had, not one we’d shared. She’s a music-lover but even music-lovers come late to Beethoven’s final piano sonatas, if they come at all. I’d intended, until junior year in college, to compose music for a living. I played music on keyboards, piano and organ. I loved music as I had not yet loved a person. But I couldn’t make heads or tails of Beethoven’s final compositions for his precious piano. The five – Opuses 101, 106, 109, 110, and 111 – were written at the end of Beethoven’s years, when the once glamorous, dominant musician was stone deaf and emotionally what my kids’ generation calls “a hot mess.” His contemporaries figured he’d gone mad. Many then and now, hearing the late sonatas initially, have shared this assessment: they sound, if not insane, unhinged from the sound-world we recognize, unlike any music before – or since. What does it mean to compose music one will never hear with one’s ears, which can sound only in one’s mind?

                  I sensed my friend would love this music if she did not know it and if she did know it, would appreciate the sentiment animating the gift. I chose from the several hours one snippet, the last movement of opus 101, though many would have sufficed, they’re all so unworldly. I chose as performer Igor Levit. Levit (b. 1987), if you don’t know him, is a Russian pianist, whose intellect – by which I mean, soul – is as prodigious as his technique. Jane and I had the privilege of hearing him play a concert of late Beethoven sonatas five years ago in Rome and I am still dumbfounded.

                  I will not fritter today’s remaining minutes attempting to describe either this music or its effect. It’s impossible – a fool’s errand – as I’ve no doubt demonstrated so far. Ecstatic experiences shrivel into shopworn adjectives – amazing, immense, “you can’t believe,” and their paltry like. Ecstasy – such is its nature – can’t be described, for it’s individual and inexpressible. In religion it’s sometimes referred to as divine grace. It took me till my mid-thirties to hear these works for the first time and another half lifetime later I am still hearing them for the first time, they are that wondrous and strange.

                  In the end I said to hell with my impracticable idea. What would I give? A link to Spotify? Odd present that! An awkward session of listening together? Or a no less clumsy invitation to listen alone – perhaps after ingesting some hallucinogen? A more familiar gift – fresh flowers, say, of a surprising (but not too surprising) hue – would serve my emotional purpose better.

                  It’s hard telling people how much they mean to you. Love rolls its eyes at its depicters. Yet how can we not at least try?

                  That is why I write.