The Magic Mountain

New lowercase ambient from a true master of the craft

You might have noticed I didn’t send you an email on Saturday.

I was still feeling under the weather and couldn’t get much research or writing done.

I think I’m getting better every day now. I don’t know if I can trust that feeling. Last time I relapsed and spent another week in bed on antibiotics. Here’s hope I’ve finally turned the corner.

These are weird days. I sleep nine to ten hours per night, and another two to three hours during the day. I eat a little, drink some water and tea, inhale, take my meds. I walk the dog and come back exhausted. I’m constantly exhausted. Even eating exhausts me.

My doctor tells me not to make any big plans until the new year.

I listen to my doctor, because I try to be a good patient. I have canceled all trips and sold my concert tickets. My only job right now is to get healthy.

I’m reminded of my favourite novel, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain.

I first read it in my early 20s, during a winter spent abroad in Zurich, Switzerland. The book is set in the Swiss Alps, at a sanitorium for lung diseases.

The patients are prescribed a Liegekur (rest cure); before the discovery of antibiotics, the best hope for people with respiratory infections was to lie about on loungers, wrapped in blankets, breathing in the cold, fresh mountain air. It could take months until a patient recovered. Sometimes it didn’t work at all.

When I came to Zurich, I was sad and depressed, without a clear direction in life. Those months in Switzerland would provide a much-needed break and space to heal and think. I spent many days reading, walking along the lake or hiking up the mountain. I truly felt like one of the patients in the book – maybe that’s why it means so much to me.

I feel similar now – not sad or depressed luckily, but like a patient on a rest cure up on a mountain, detached from normal life.

Thanks for your kind well-wishes,

Stephan

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