Genius

First published in Column 8 on the 23^rd Sept, 1992

While it’s good to read that Bobby Fischer, the all-time marvel of world chess champions, is back playing top class games, it’s sad to see his eccentricities are still in full bloom.

I guess that’s only to be expected. Unfortunately the peculiarities of geniuses (such as Fischer) are accentuated by being publicised. Oddities that might be dismissed in people of un-renown (in which category most of us fit), become highly visible in people whose gifting makes them stand out from the crowd.

Fischer is reported to fuss about the height of the toilet seat. While I would agree that most toilet seats are a shade too high, who would listen to me, or more to the point, do anything about it! (I can’t even get people to replace a toilet roll in the holder, so what chance have I of a lowered seat?)

Fischer fussed about the chess board, which had to be lowered three millimetres. Height is important – for geniuses. Glenn Gould used to insist of having his piano stool set so low he seemed to play from under the keyboard.

I’m plainly not in the genius class. While accompanying singers in the competitions, I found it too embarrassing to sit there adjusting the swivel on the piano stool – quite apart from the the fact that I can never remember, when I actually get to sit on it, whether I have to turn the thing to the left or right.

Fischer has conspiracy theories about Judaism. He claims Judaism hides under the mask of Bolshevism, which is in turn hidden by Communism. And Communists are cheats, he says, and that’s why his opponent Kasparov beat Karpov in 1985. The logic is apparent only to a man of genius.

I’ve heard plenty of non-geniuses burble on in such a way; fortunately no one pays them much heed. In fact I’ve been through a few conspiracy theories of my own. Since my world audience is smaller than Fischer’s no one pays my theories much heed either. When conspiracy theories are ignored, one eventually matures and grows beyond them – hopefully.

Samuel Rogers relates that ‘one forenoon’ he and fellow poet, Wordsworth, called on Samuel Taylor Coleridge (now mostly remembered for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner). Coleridge, who could expound poetry excellently, on this occasion talked uninterruptedly for two hours. Wordsworth listened with profound attention, nodding his head in assent. As they left the house, Rogers asked Wordsworth if he could make head or tail of Coleridge’s ramblings. ‘Not one word of it,’ said Wordsworth.

The worst thing about being a genius is that someone always wants to dramatise your life. Bad enough if you’re still alive, worse if your dead and can’t sue.

Mozart would be appalled at the treatment he received in Amadeus, for instance. This film (based on a play) gave many moviegoers a distorted picture of the Mozart-Salieri dispute, and will have convinced said moviegoers that Mozart was a redneck idiot who couldn’t get two seconds of his life together. How he was supposed to have simultaneously composed some of the most sublime music of all time is a question not to be asked.

It's kind of a relief not to be a genius. Conspiracy theories are one thing, but who’d want it known that you sucked peppermints in excess and enjoyed wearing a twenty-year-old overcoat?

A photograph of Samuel Rogers in his old age -
he lived to be 92. 

The other problem with piano stools is that it takes some time to figure out whether you’ve actually lowered or raised the thing, so subtle is the degree of movement down or up. Usually you wind up having lowered it when you wanted it made higher, or vice versa, and then you have to sit there playing knowing that you’ve made it worse than it was.

It took me some years to catch up on Amadeus again, by which time I’d learned more about Mozart and knew that a good deal of the drama was based on stories rather than truth. Mozart’s character was also made to be of such silliness it was embarrassing to watch. And in the director’s cut version that I saw there were several scenes that certainly deserved to be left out, but no longer were.